taaa&MaBSSBm:: 

I Library of Congress. * ' 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



* THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 



THE 



MIRAGE OF LIFE. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY TEA' MEL, _ 

Engraved by Buttcrivorth and Heath. 



LONDON: 
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 

56. PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD J 
AND 164, PICCADILLY. 



- 









Uf 



,61904 

1 Oh for a heart magnanimous to know 
Thy worth, poor world, and let thee go." 

Jane Taylc 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

THE MIRAGE II 

THE MAN OF FASHION 23 

THE MAN OF WEALTH 37 

THE HERO 57 

THE STATESMAN 73 

THE ORATOR 89 

THE ARTIST 103 

THE MAN OF LITERATURE I 19 

THE POET 133 

THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR 151 

THE MAN OF THE WORLD 169 

THE BEAUTY iSl 

THE MONARCH 1 93 

CONCLUDING REMARKS 209 



THE MIRAGE. 




THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 



THE MIRAGE. 

jo understand the natural object from 
which the title of this little volume is 
borrowed, let the reader imagine that, 
after travelling for hours across a trackless waste 
of burning sand, amidst the arid deserts of the 
East, he has, when tormented by thirst, made 
the discovery that his supply of water has failed. 
The last muddy drops are eagerly drained, but 
the sensation of pain is only aggravated by the 
effort. Meanwhile, the eyes, the mouth, the 
ears are gradually filled with the fine sand of 
the desert, until it is felt that a cup of cold water 
B 2 



12 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

from the spring would be cheaply purchased by 
its weight in gold. At this moment, when such 
is the traveller's tortured state of mind and body, 
he suddenly beholds an object which, to his sur- 
prise, has escaped his notice before. In the dis- 
tance is seen a large lake ; its banks are fringed 
with groves of verdant palm ; its bosom studded 
with islets of refreshing green, while its water 
seems tenfold more inviting when contrasted 
with the burning solitudes around. Re-animated 
by the prospect, he presses forward, eager to 
quench his thirst. As he advances, a singular 
spectacle is witnessed, a strange phenomenon 
arises. The lake recedes as he approaches it. 
Again and again does he advance, but again 
and again does the object retire ; until at length, 
exhausted with fatigue, tortured by thirst, and 
overpowered by excitement, he sinks in despair 
on the sand, discovering that all is deception, 
and that he has been chasing the Mirage of the 
desert. 

This remarkable natural appearance is an 



THE MIRAGE, I 3 

optical illusion, produced by the reflection of 
objects on the oblique rays of the sun refracted 
by the air, which is rarefied by the heat of the 
burning soil. It is apparently alluded to in the 
sacred Scriptures (Isa. xxxv. 6, 7) : " In the 
wilderness shall waters break out, and streams 
in the desert. And the parched ground shall 
become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of 
water." The word translated parched ground 
is, in the original, of the same form as serab, 
the term which the Arabs in the present" day 
employ when speaking of the Mirage.* 

This curious illusion has been frequently 
witnessed by modern travellers. " In the dis- 
tance," says one, " we observed the well-known 
phenomenon of the Mirage. At one time it 
appeared to be a calm flowing water, reflecting 
on its unruffled surface the trees growing on its 
banks ; while some object in the background 
assumed the appearance of a splendid residence, 
amidst a grove of trees. At another time 
* See Gesenius in loc. 



14 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

there appeared a castle embosomed in a forest 
of palms, with a lake of clear water stretched 
between us and them." 

It is, however, when the traveller, as repre- 
sented above, is tortured by thirst, that the 
deceptions of the Mirage prove most appalling. 
A remarkable instance of this occurred during 
the passage of the French army across the 
desert at the time of Napoleon's expedition to 
Egypt " When morning dawned," says the 
historian who describes the scene, " the army 
found itself traversing boundless plains of sand 
without water or shade, and with a burning sun 
over their heads. All the wells on the road 
were either filled up or exhausted. Hardly a 
few drops of muddy or brackish water were to be 
found to quench their thirst. In the midst of 
the general depression, a sudden gleam of hope 
illuminated the countenances of the soldiers. 
A lake appeared in the wilderness, with villages 
and palm-trees clearly reflected on its glassy 
surface. Instantly the parched troops hastened 



THE MIRAGE. I 7 

to the enchanted spot, but it receded from their 
steps ; again they pressed on with burning 
impatience, but it for ever fled from their 
approach ; and they had at length the mor- 
tification of discovering that they had been 
deceived by the Mirage of the desert." 

Under the general term Mirage are also 
comprehended various atmospherical illusions 
of a very interesting character. In particular 
climates, at certain seasons of the year, there 
are seen in the ocean and the sky represen- 
tations of cities, groves, mountains, rivers, 
spacious plains, castles, arches, and rows of 
superb pilasters. Like some splendid phan- 
tasmagoria, they fill the spectator with asto- 
nishment and delight, then vanish into air, or 
assume, with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope, 
new combinations, even more astonishing and 
beautiful than those which preceded them. 
Persons who have witnessed these phenomena 
have declared that they would rather have 
seen them than the most magnificent spec- 



[8 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

tacles of art. One writer, describing them, 
states that the sea suddenly assuming the sem- 
blance of a polished mirror, was then imme- 
diately, as far as the eye could reach, covered 
with a series of graceful arches, forming an 
apparently interminable vista. Some English 
voyagers, in the Arctic regions, were so en- 
raptured with these splendid visions, as to 
term the place w r here they were seen " the 
enchanted coast." " The general aspect of 
the coast," says an" eye-witness, " was that of 
an extensive and ancient city, with ruined 
castles, churches, hills surmounted by turrets, 
battlements, spires, and pinnacles. Scarcely 
was one particular object sketched than it 
assumed a different shape. It was now a 
castle, — then a cathedral or an obelisk — then, 
with equal suddenness, it would form a bridge, 
with an arch some miles in extent, presenting 
an appearance of the utmost magnificence, but 
of the most evanescent duration." 

Such, in different aspects, is the Mirage of 



THE MIRAGE. 1 9 

nature. With the last-mentioned species of it 
this little work has but a passing connection. 
Were poetical beauty, however, the object of 
our illustration, we might dwell upon it, as 
under a lively emblem portraying the transito- 
riness of worldly things. As fades the Mirage 
in the sky, so vanishes terrestrial glory, realizing 
the words of a poet — 

"Where is the world in which a man was born? 
Alas ! where is the world of eight years past ? 
'Twas there — I look for it — 'tis gone ; a globe of "glass, 
Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed upon 
Ere a silent change dissolves the glittering mass/' 

It is from the Mirage of the desert that we 
propose to illustrate the Mirage of Life. Jour- 
neying like a pilgrim across the wilderness of 
this world, man thirsts for happiness. The 
Almighty, in his word, proclaims himself the 
living Fountain at which alone this thirst can 
be gratified. Despising, however, his gracious 
invitation, the majority of mankind pursue false 
and illusive streams, which, promising as they 



20 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

appear in the distance, prove, when approached, 
deceptive as the Mirage. One man is deceived 
by the Mirage of Pleasure ; another, by the 
Mirage of Ambition ; a third, by the Mirage of 
Wealth. As each bubble bursts, a new one 
emerges, until death steps in, and dissipates the 
illusion for ever. 

" In vain the erring world enquires 
For some substantial good ; 
While earth confines their low desires 
They live on airy food. 

Illusive dreams of happiness 

Their eager thoughts employ ; 
They wake convinced the boasted bliss 

Was visionary joy." 

Such is the Mirage of Life ; a title which 
we have selected as calculated, under a striking 
poetical emblem, to warn all, and especially the 
young, against the allurements of the world. 
The illustrations by which we propose to ex- 
plain it will be a series of portraits of men of 
eminence, in various walks of life, who sought 
their happiness in worldly pursuits, without 



THE MIRAGE. 2 1 

reference to the glory of God. Our aim, ac- 
cordingly, will be to show — in some instances 
from their own words, in others from facts more 
striking than any language — that although these 
individuals drew the highest prizes in the lottery 
of life, yet, in forsaking the fountain of living 
waters, they failed to gain permanent happi- 
ness, and found their objects of pursuit, when 
grasped, only vanity and vexation of spirit. 




THE MAN OF FASHION. 




THE MAN OF FASHION. 



[midst the various objects which men 
have pursued in search of happiness 
the Mirage of Fashion may be first 
named. In every age, a large portion of 
mankind have fixed their affections on the 
pleasures of dress, frivolous amusements, and 
trifling gaiety. That man, formed with such 
high capacities for moral and intellectual en- 
joyment, should have narrowed his mind to 
such pursuits, is indeed surprising : that he 
should have expected happiness in them is still 
more so. The illusion, it might have been 
supposed, would at once have been detected, 
and the pursuit abandoned. Experience has 
shown, however, that the numbers are not 



26 THE MIRAGE OE LTEE. 

small of those who have deliberately sought 
to pervert life to this end. At this moment 
there are multitudes whose sole aim is to 
mix in what is termed " good society ; " who 
leave the circle in which Providence has fitted 
them to be useful, and vainly endeavour to 
court the favour of those who secretly despise 
them ; who are the slaves of etiquette ; who 
dread what is vulgar much more than what is 
sinful, and who sacrifice, to the cruel idol of 
fashion, usefulness, self-respect, and peace. As 
a terrible warning to all such stands forth 
the career of George Brummell, or, The 
Man of Fashion. 

This remarkable man was born towards the 
end of the last century ; and, at the early age 
of sixteen, received a commission as officer 
in a regiment of Hussars, in which his taste 
fur dress found ample means of gratification. 
He may be said to have entered life with 
the full flowing tide of prosperity. He was 



THE MAN OF FASHION. 29 

the favourite of his brother officers. Royalty 
itself smiled upon him ; and he soon became 
distinguished for his fashionable manners, 
refinement of taste, a delicate vein of satire, 
and a spirit of affectation blended with quaint 
humour. At the age of twenty-one he suc- 
ceeded to property of the value of 30,000/. 
principally in ready money. Being now 
master of his own time, he resolved to devote 
himself wholly to a life of fashion. Unhappy 
choice ! Could any one, with prophetic vision, 
have unrolled the future before him, he 
would have started back from the prospect 
in horror. A taste in matters of dress was 
that for which he first laboured to be dis- 
tinguished; and that so successfully, that the 
tailors of the metropolis soon learned to regu- 
late the fashions by his decision. The Prince 
Regent himself would occasionally attend his 
dressing-room for an hour in the morning, to 
watch the mysterious grace with which he 
discharged the duties of the toilet. As Watt 



$0 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

was celebrated in the world of science for the 
invention of the steam-engine, so was Brummell 
in the world of fashion for the invention of 
starched neckcloths. " Call you this nothing?" 
observes a satirical writer ; " I have known 
many a man with 10,000/. a year who never 
did anything half so useful to his fellow- 
creatures." 

Brummell was, through his intimacy with the 
Prince Recent, admitted to the highest circles 
of the nobility. No party was complete with- 
out him ; and the morning papers, in giving the 
details of a rout, always placed his name first 
on the list of untitled guests. He became 
remarkable for his pretensions to extraordinary 
refinement, and his freedom from everything 
that could be termed vulvar. Beino- asked 
what was a fair annual allowance to a young 
man for clothes, he answered that 800/. a 
year might do with strict economy. He 
pretended to be ignorant of the exact geo- 
graphical position of a place called "The 



THE MAN OF FASHION. 3 1 

City;" and being asked if he were fond of 
vegetables, answered, after a due pause for 
recollection, that he believed he had once 
eaten a pea. Not contented with being ad- 
mitted to the world of fashion, Brummell 
aimed at being its dictator; and in this he 
effectually succeeded. For years he gave the 
law to the highest fashionable circles. A 
nobleman would think himself honoured by 
having his arm during a stroll down St. 
James's Street ; and a duchess would tremble 
at his decision, as what would stamp her un- 
fashionable or otherwise. Such was Beau 
Brummell in the height of his glory as a 
man of fashion: the leader of ton, the 
patron of noblemen, the despot of the realms 
of taste. What a poor and contemptible life ! 
What a waste of existence ! But was he 
happy ? Ah, no ! Proud and vain, he imagined 
that his success would continue unbroken ; 
but he was soon to discover that all was 
evanescent as the Mirage. 



32 TIIK MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

Leaving St. James's Street and its fashion- 
able idlers, we must now ask our readers to 
turn their attention to a provincial town in 
France. Who is this old man, that, in ragged 
clothes and with tottering steps, walks feebly 
along the streets surrounded by children who 
mock and jeer at him as he goes ? His 
face is familiar to us, and his air, amidst his 
w r retchedness and poverty, speaks of days 
gone by when better times were his. It is 
Brummell, the man of fashion, fallen from his 
high estate ! Embarrassed by his extrava- 
gance, he had to flee to the Continent, where, 
deserted by hollow friends, he fell from one 
degree of wretchedness to another. For 
a while he pursued, on a diminished scale, his 
former course; but was at last arrested for 
debt. His agitation on this occasion was ex- 
treme, and he gave way to a burst of tears. 
Resistance was vain, however, and the gay 
butterfly of fashion found himself the inmate 
of a wretched and squalid jail. By some kind 



THE MAN OF FASHION. 33 

individuals he was released from this abode 
of misery ; but misfortune failed to teach 
him reflection. He still retained the tastes of 
his earlier years, though unable from circum- 
stances to gratify them. When at the lowest 
point of financial distress, he could with diffi- 
culty be persuaded, although almost in want 
of the common necessaries of life, to forego 
the use of some fashionable blacking which 
cost five shillings a bottle. Forsaken and for- 
gotten by the sunshine friends of his "pro- 
sperity, Brummell became to a considerable 
extent dependent on the kindness of a grocer, 
one from those humble classes at whose 
vulgarity he had so often sneered. He who 
had affected such great fastidiousness in his 
culinary tastes was glad to obtain a meal at a 
tradesman's board; and he, too, who had said 
that it was possible for a man to dress on 
800/. a year with strict economy, was indebted 
to a compassionate tailor for mending the 
holes in his garments, at which time, for lack 



34 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

of change of raiment, he was obliged to re- 
main in bed until his clothes were returned 
to him. " He had now," says his biographer, 
" passed the point at which he was the per- 
sonification of a broken gentleman." He be- 
came a complete sloven. The last remnant 
of self-respect abandoned him, and, unable to 
obtain credit, he would beg at a shop for ar- 
ticles for which he was no longer able to pay. 
His mind was weakened by his misfortunes; 
and, in his lonely apartment, he would at 
times imagine that he was givinsr one of 
his fashionable parties. His attendant, who 
humoured him, would announce the arrival of 
the Duchess of Devonshire, or some distin- 
guished visitor. Rising up, the poor Beau 
would salute the empty air with ceremonious 
politeness; then, as if aware of his fallen posi- 
tion, his eyes would fill with childish tears. 
At ten o'clock the carriages of his imaginary 
visitors were announced, and the farce was 
at an end. 



THE MAN OF FASHION. 35 

Such was Beau Brummell in his fall. Fur- 
ther misfortunes, however, were yet to come. 
Brummell's reason having partially failed, he 
was conducted to a madhouse. An English 
clergyman, who visited him when near his 
death, tried to touch some chord of religion 
to which his mind might vibrate. It was, 
however, all in vain. " Never," says the visitor, 
who was familiar with the treatment of the 
insane ; " never did I come in contact with such 
an exhibition of vanity and thoughtlessness. 
In reply to my entreaties that he would pray, 
he said, ' I do try ; ' but he added something 
which made me doubt whether he understood 
my meaning." Shortly after this visit, his 
nurse observed him assume an appearance of 
extreme anxiety. He fixed his eyes upon her 
as if asking for assistance. She made him 
repeat some form of prayer ; then, turning on 
his side, he died. 

Such was the end of the man of fashion. 
We pr.usc not to moralize on his melancholy 



36 



THE MIRAGE OF I. IFF.. 



career — on the exhibition of selfishness, wasted 
time, and squandered powers, which it presents. 
He had devoted himself to the slavery of 
fashion, and in the end he discovered that he 
had been deluded by the Mirage. 

u Use this world, as not abusing it : for the fashion of this 
world passeth away/' — i Cor. vii. 31. 




THE MAN OF WEALTH, 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 




far more general object of pursuit 
than fashion is Wealth. This may be 
almost termed the universal passion, 
and it might appear at first sight bold to class 
its votaries amongst those who are chasing 
the Mirage. Yet true it is, that however 
legitimate the possession of wealth, when em- 
ployed as a talent for promoting the glory of 
God and the good of our fellow-creatures, it 
is, when sought without reference to these 
ends, a snare and a delusion. 

It is deceptive as regards the certainty of its 
acquisition. A young merchant, intoxicated 



40 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

with success and full of worldly energy, was a 
short time since boasting, in the presence of the 
writer of these pages, that fortunes were to be 
made in London, and that he had set his heart 
on acquiring one. Within a few months after 
he was in his grave. 

Wealth is deceptive, also, as regards the en- 
joyment which it promises to its possessors. 
The writer was, at one time, in the habit of 
meeting another merchant, who, almost in the 
prime of life, had succeeded in realizing a for- 
tune of more than 100,000/. by incessant toil. 
The time for retiring to enjoy his hard-won 
earnings at last came ; but a fit of paralysis, 
brought on by excessive labour, shattered his 
frame, and reduced him to a state of pitiable 
helplessness. 

Wealth is further deceptive when viewed 
with reference to its vanity when acquired. 
The great 1 Hike of Marlborough used to walk 
through tlie rain at night to save sixpence, and 
accumulated a fortune of a million and a half. 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 4 1 

" Would he have taken all this pains/' asks a 
writer, " could he have foreseen that after his 
death his fortune would, in the course of a few 
years, pass into the hands of a family which 
he had always opposed and regarded as his 
enemies ? " Dr. King, in the anecdotes of 
his own times, speaks of a gentleman of his 
acquaintance, who went back a long distance 
to exchange a bad halfpenny which he had 
taken from the waiter of a coffee-room. He 
died worth more than 200,000/. ; but " his 
fortune, from want of a will, was divided 
amongst six day-labourers, for whom, when 
living, he had no regard. He had heaped up 
riches, without knowing who should gather 
them. A late Scottish nobleman, accom- 
panying a gentleman to the summit of a hill 
which overlooked his lordship's estates, after 
explaining that, as far as the eye could reach, 
the country was his property, stated, in reply 
to the remark, " Surely your lordship must 
be a happy man," that he did not believe 

D 



42 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

there was in all the vast circuit that met 
their gaze an individual so unhappy as him- 
self. The guilty Colonel Charteris found 
that piles of wealth were a poor substitute 
for a peaceful conscience ; when dying, he 
said he would readily give 30,000/. to have 
it proved to his satisfaction that there was 
no such place as hell. Still more miserable 
was the career of the well-known Elwes, the 
miser. When worth more than half a million, 
he wore clothes so ragged that many persons, 
mistaking him for a common street beggar, 
would put a penny into his hand as they 
passed. He would pick up bones and rags. 
He would glean with his tenants in his fields, 
and complain bitterly of the birds robbing 
him of so much hay with which to build 
their nests. He, however, gained his end in 
life. He accumulated nearly a million of 
money, but found, when he had done so, 
that the object of his search was full of 
dissatisfaction. His last days, we are told, 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 43 

were embittered by anxiety about the preser- 
vation of his property. He would start from 
his sleep, exclaiming, " My money ! my 
money ! You shall not rob me of my 
money." At the dead of night he was found 
wandering through his house, bemoaning the 
loss of a five-pound note, which he had hid 
in a place that he could not remember; and, 
although then a millionaire, protesting that 
the note was nearly all he had in the world ! 
His last hours were filled with gloom and 
anxiety. He died wretched and unhappy, 
possessing such extensive wealth, and yet 
finding it unable to supply the wants of an 
immortal spirit. 

Leaving, however, various other forms in 
which the Mirage of wealth might be exempli- 
fied, we shall confine ourselves to one more 
illustration, namely, the instability of riches, 
and select for our type, William Beckford 
of Fonthill, or, The Man of Wealth. 



D 2 



44 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

William Beckford was born towards the 
middle of the eighteenth century. He was 
the only son of a wealthy West Indian pro- 
prietor, who, dying when his child was ten 
years of age, left an income of more than 
100,000/. a year, to accumulate until the boy 
should reach his majority. Young Beckford's 
mental powers were good, and no pains were 
spared in cultivating them by a refined edu- 
cation. Sir William Chambers instructed 
him in architecture, and the eminent Mozart 
taught him music. At twenty-one, with the 
income of a prince, and accumulations in 
ready money to the amount of about a mil- 
lion sterling, he launched upon the world. 
How vast were the capacities of usefulness 
placed before him! His income might have 
banished penury from whole districts of his 
country. The great talent of promoting human 
happiness was placed within his reach ; but he 
threw the golden opportunity away. Proud 
and haughty, the youthful Beckford withdrew 






THE MAN OF WEALTH. 45 

from the active business of life ; and retiring 
to the Continent, devoted himself to a life of 
luxurious ease. Settling after a time in Por- 
tugal, he there lavished his wealth upon a 
charming villa, which a poet, who visited it 
when in ruins, has described in the following 
lines : — 

" Here, too, thou, Beckford — England's wealthiest son— 
Once formed thy paradise, as not aware 
When wanton Wealth hter mightiest deeds hath done, 
Meek Peace voluptuous snares was ever wont to shunt 
Here didst thou dwell ; here schemes of pleasure plan, 
Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow. 
But now, as if a thing unblest by man, 
Thy lonely dwelling is as lone as thou. 
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow 
To halls deserted, portals gaping wide ; 
Fresh lessons to unthinking mortals, how 
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied, 
Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide." 

During Beckford's residence in Portugal, he 
visited, under the royal sanction, some of the 
wealthy and luxurious monasteries of that 
country. It is difficult to convey an idea of 
the pomp and splendour of this journey, 



46 TIIF MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

which resembled more the cavalcade of an 
eastern prince than the tour of a private 
individual. " Everything," he himself says, 
"that could be thought or dreamed of for our 
convenience or relaxation was carried in our 
train — nothing was left behind but care and 
sorrow." " The ceiling of my apartment in 
the monastery," he adds, " was gilded and 
painted ; the floor spread with Persian carpets 
of the finest texture ; the tables decked with 
superb ewers and basins of chased silver." 
The kitchen in which his dinner was pre- 
pared is thus described : " A stream of water 
flowed through it, from which were formed 
reservoirs containing every kind of river-fish. 
On one side were heaped up loads of game 
and venison ; on the other side were v< 
tables and fruit, in endless variety. Beyond a 
long line of stores extended a row of ovens, 
and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour, 
tmer than snow; rocks of sugar, jars of the 
purest oil, and pastry in various abundance." 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 47 

The dinner which followed these preparations 
was served in a magnificent saloon of the 
monastery, covered with pictures, and lighted 
up with a profusion of wax tapers in sconces 
of silver. " The banquet," he adds, " con- 
sisted of rarities and delicacies, of every sea- 
son, from distant countries." Confectionery 
and fruits awaited the party in a room still 
more sumptuous, where vessels of Goa fili- 
gree, containing the rarest and most fragrant 
spices, were handed round. Such was Beck- 
ford's mode of life during this journey. Pain- 
ful recollections are awakened, when perusing 
this narrative, of a certain rich man who was 
clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 
sumptuously every day. 

Returning, at the commencement of the pre- 
sent century, to his native country, Beckford 
again abandoned himself to an unwise enjoy- 
ment of his wealth. Taking a capricious dis- 
like to a splendid mansion on his estate, which 
had been erected by his father at a vast cost, 



48 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

he ordered it to be pulled down. He re- 
solved that, phoenix-like, there should arise 
from its ruins a building which should surpass 
in magnificence all that hitherto had been 
known in English art. Fonthill Abbey, one of 
the wonders of the West of England, was the 
result of this determination. Whole galleries 
of that vast pile were apparently erected 
for the sole purpose of enabling Beckford to 
emblazon on their windows the crests of the 
families from whom he boasted his descent. 
The wonder of the fabric, however, was a 
tower of colossal dimensions and great height, 
erected somewhat in the manner and spirit of 
those who once reared a similar structure on 
the plains of Shinar : " Go to, let us build us 
a city and a tower whose top may reach unto 
heaven ; and let us make us a name." 

To complete the erection of Beckford's 
princely pile, almost every cart in the county 
was employed, so that at one time agricultural 
labour was well-nigh suspended. Impatient oi 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 5 1 

delay, night, at one period, was not allowed to 
impose obstacles to the progress of the work. 
Torch-light was employed ; fresh bands of 
labourers relieving at evening those who 
worked by day. In the dark nights of win- 
ter, the distant traveller was startled by the 
blaze of light from Fonthill, which proclaimed 
at once the resources and the folly of the man 
of wealth. Beckford's principal enjoyment 
was in watching the erection of this structure. 
At nightfall he would repair to some elevated 
grounds, and there, in solitude, would feast his 
eyes for hours w T ith the singular spectacle 
presented by the dancing of the lights, and 
the play of their light on the neighbouring 
forest. The building seemed, indeed, Beck- 
ford's idol — the object for which he lived. 
He devoted the whole of his energies to 
make it realize the most fascinating visions 
of an excited imagination. 

After the completion of the abbey, Beckford's 
conduct was still more extraordinary. A wall, 



THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

twelve feet high, surrounded his mansion and 
grounds, the latter of which were so arranged 
as to contain walks and rides twenty miles in 
extent. Within this mysterious circle scarcely 
any visitors were allowed to pass. In stately 
grandeur he dwelt alone, shunning converse 
with the world around. Majesty itself, so ran 
the rumour, was desirous of visiting this won- 
derful domain, but was refused admittance. 
Strangers would disguise themselves as ser- 

o o 

vants, as peasants, or as pedlars, in the hope 
of catching even a transient glimpse at its 
glories. Nor was its interior unworthy of this 
curiosity. All that art and wealth could give, 
to produce effect, w r ere there. M Gold and 
silver vases and cups," says one who saw the 
place, " are so numerous here that they dazzle 
the eye ; and when one looks round at the 
cabinets, candelabras, and ornaments which 
decorate the room, we may almost imagine 
that we stand in the treasury of some oriental 
prince, whose riches consist entirely in vessels 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 53 

of gold and silver enriched with precious 
stones of every sort, from the ruby to the 
diamond. "* 

Such was Beckford of Fonthill. With an 
income of more than 100,000/. per annum, he 
seemed above the reach of fortune. Who 
would have ventured to style all this splendour 
evanescent as the Mirage ? And yet it was so. 
A sudden depreciation of West Indian pro- 
perty took place. Some lawsuits terminated 
unfavourably, and embarrassments poured in 
like a flood on the princely owner. The gates 
which had refused admittance to a monarch 
were rudely thrust open by a sheriff's officer. 



* The grounds of Fonthill seem to have been almost as 
beautiful as the interior. There were all varieties of surface ; 
winding vale, steep ridge, hill, dell, knoll, and lake, clumps and 
masses of oak and pine ; solitude for the poet and painter ; 
terraces ; a flower garden unmatched in England ; American 
plantations filled with the trees and flowering shrubs of North 
America. Here were extent, repose, and majesty for the pencil 
of Claude ; the rugged grandeur that would affect Ruysdael ; 
and the deep and savage wildness which suited the genius of 
Salvator Rosa. 



54 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

The mansion, erected at so vast an expense, 
was sold. The greater part of the costly 
treasures were scattered by the hammer of the 
auctioneer; and Beckford driven, with the shat- 
tered fragments of a fortune, to spend his old 
age in a watering-place ; there to muse on the 
instability of wealth ; there to feel how little 
pleasure the retrospect of neglected talents can 
give, and to point the oft-told moral of the 
vanity of human pursuits. He fell, it is said, 
unpitied. The noblest opportunities of con- 
ferring happiness had been placed within his 
reach, and had been thrown away. What 
could he now show for the amount of wealth 
intrusted to his stewardship ? Little more 
than a heap of rubbish ! a dismantled mansion 
in Portugal, and two ruined dwellings in 
England. The tower, which he had erected 
at so great a cost, fell to the ground, and 
Fonthill Abbey was pulled clown by its new 
owner. 

Thus melted away, like frostwork before the 



THE MAN OF WEALTH. 



55 



sun, the extravagant productions of the man of 
wealth. His whole life had been a sad misap- 
plication of the talents committed to his care, 
and in the end he discovered that he had been 
cheated by the Mirage. 



" Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not 
high-minded, nor trust m uncertain riches, but in the living 
God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." — I Tim. vi. 17. 




THE HERO. 




THE HERO. 



JInother object of eager ardent pursuit to 
a large number of our fellow-creatures 
is Military Glory. Multitudes seek the 
" bubble reputation " as the chief end of life, 
indifferent to the scenes of misery with which 
it is so closely connected. Few illusions, how- 
ever, are in general more speedily dissipated 
than this. The youth who, dazzled by a bril- 
liant uniform, allured by the gaieties and dissi- 
pation of the mess-room, or impelled by the 
love of adventure, quits his native country in 
search of " glory," soon finds his visions dis- 
persed by the stern realities of a camp, and the 
hardships of a military life. 

In the journal of a soldier in the 72nd 

E 2 



6o THE MI RACK OF LIFE. 

regiment, published at the conclusion of the 
last general continental war, an instance 
of this occurs. The author of it had been 
induced, in hopes of a life of pleasure, to 
enlist in the army, and to forsake his home, 
greatly to the grief of his parents. A few 
years afterwards, he was, when serving in 
the Peninsula, glad to be allowed to eat of 
the biscuits which he was employed to break 
for the hounds of the commander-in-chief, at 
a time when provisions were scarce. " I ate 
them with tears," he says, " and thought of 
the Prodigal Son." 

Full of self-confidence, the young soldiers 
who attended Napoleon in his expedition to 
Moscow shouted as they left Paris, " We shall 
be back in six months !" They dreamed of 
conquest; but it was only the Mirage. In a 
few months the mighty host of Napoleon, 
except a small remnant, was buried in the 
snows of Russia. 

In the life of Lord Nelson, it is striking to 



THE HERO. 6 I 

observe that, nearly at the time when the 
various potentates of Europe were showering 
down upon this hero presents of diamond-hilted 
swords, gold snuff-boxes, and crosses of honour, 
he was himself unable to enjoy his greatness, 
having for months been deprived of sleep by the 
injury done to a nerve in the amputation of one 
of his arms. Lally, a great French general in 
the last century, was rewarded by an un- 
grateful country with an ignominious death for 
his reverses in India. Suwarroff, the brave 
Russian general, after having served his em- 
press and his country with great distinction, 
was treated in his declining years with mortify- 
ing neglect. 

"On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, 
How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide ; . . . 
His fall was destined to a barren strand, 
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand ; 
He left the name, at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral, or adorn a tale." 

One of the most remarkable instances, how- 
ever, of the Mirage of military glory, and its 



62 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 

inability, even when enjoyed to its full extent, 
to confer happiness on its possessor, is to be 
found in the life of Lord Clive, the founder of 
the British empire in India, whom we now 
select as our type of The Hero. 

Robert, afterwards Lord Clive, was born in 
Shropshire, in the year 1729, of parents in no 
way distinguished for opulence or rank. In 
early life he displayed strong indications of 
those remarkable qualities which developed 
themselves in after years. The people of 
Market Drayton, it is said, long remembered 
stories told them by their parents of the future 
conqueror of India terrifying the village by 
climbing to the pinnacle of the church steeple, 
and perching himself on a stone spout near the 
summit. Clive, so runs the tradition, organized 
a little regiment, composed of his schoolfellows, 
and, in the true spirit of a military commander, 
levied a tribute of halfpence from the shop 
keepers, as a species of tax for protecting their 



THE HERO. 65 

windows from being broken. It is related also, 
by Clive's biographer, that on one occasion when 
a dam broke (which the boys had made across 
the street for the purpose of overflowing the 
shop of a refractory tradesman, who had pro- 
bably declined payment of the tribute just men- 
tioned), Clive unhesitatingly threw his body 
across the aperture in the work, and thus re- 
mained until the breach was repaired. 

At an early period of his life, Clive proceeded 
as a mercantile clerk to India, having received 
employment in the East India Company's ser- 
vice. The possessions of that body were then 
small and limited, and its troops scarcely nu- 
merous enough to man a few batteries. Madras 
was the point to which the youthful hero first 
bent his steps. On his arrival there he soon 
gave marks of his determined spirit and insen- 
sibility to fear. He chastised a person who had 
been the bully of his regiment, and gained a re- 
putation for energy and decision of character. 
Amongst the various requisites, however, for 



66 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 

true success which he had taken with him to 
India, one was forgotten — the fear of God was 
not before his eyes. Dejected by some trifling 
disappointment, he twice attempted to commit 
suicide. Twice the pistol was raised to his 
head ; but twice the trigger refused to move. 
Shortly afterwards a friend came in, and Give 
desired him to fire the same pistol out of the 
window. He did so, and the weapon was dis- 
charged with ease. Clive was. filled, not with 
gratitude at the forbearing mercy of God, but 
with selfish elation. " I see," he exclaimed, 
"that I am reserved for something great." He 
soon after this resigned his situation as a 
clerk, and obtained an ensign cy in a regiment 
of foot. 

It would be impracticable, even if it were 
desirable, to give in this work a sketch of his 
wonderful career. When a mere youth, he 
signalised himself by raising, with a handful 
of men, the siege of an important city. The 
whole of his force consisted of 200 Englishmen 



THE HERO. 67 

and 300 native soldiers. Of the eight officers 
who accompanied him only two had before been 
in action. The weather was stormy ; but Clive 
pushed on, through rain, lightning, and thunder, 
to the gates of the city. The besieging party, 
in alarm, withdrew on his approach, without 
striking a blow. Afterwards, however, they 
returned to the attack, and, with elephants 
whose heads were armed with iron plates, en- 
deavoured to batter down the gates of the city, 
but in vain. They next tried to starve Clive 
and his garrison ; and it was then that the 
Hindoo soldiers under his command made their 
memorable speech : "Give us," they said, 
" as provisions are failing, give us the water in 
which the rice is boiled : it is sufficient for our 
support. Let the Europeans take the grain." 

Such was the commencement of Give's mili- 
tary career; and the remainder corresponded 
with it. He laid the foundation of the British 
empire in India ; and displayed, although un- 
taught in the art of war, a genius equal to that 



68 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 

of the most experienced commanders. Victory 
succeeded victory. His history is one roll of 
successes. No scruple of conscience, however, 
was allowed to check him, when expediency 
appeared to demand an opposite course. " He 
no sooner," says Mr. Macaulay, " found himself 
matched against an Indian intriguer, than he 
became himself one, and descended to false- 
hood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution 
of documents, and to the counterfeiting of sig- 
natures." He had aimed, however, at worldly 
greatness, and he gained his end. Wealth was 
heaped upon him in piles. One Indian prince 
gave him a pension of 30,000/. a year ; and on 
another occasion added to it a present of 
300,000/. There was, indeed, no limit to his 
acquisitions but his own moderation. u Had 
you seen," said he, on one occasion, " the 
treasury of the Nabob, and the piles of gold, 
silver, and diamonds, amidst which I walked, 
you would have thought me moderate in taking 
the above sum." 



THE HERO. 69 

He gained the highest honours also. When 
a youth of twenty-seven, he received from the 
East India Company a diamond-hilted sword ; 
and was thrice appointed by it to the highest 
offices at its disposal. His sovereign elevated 
him to the peerage; and the great Earl of 
Chatham praised him, in the British senate, as 
a distinguished genius, and a master of the art 
of war. " The whole kingdom," wrote his father, 
"is in transports at the glory and success you 
have gained. Come away, and let us rejoice 
together." Laden with honours, with wealth, 
which he used not ungenerously, and with glory, 
Clive returned to England in the prime of life, 
intending to devote himself to the enjoyment of 
his immense fortune. Here, then, it may be 
thought, was one, at least, whose acquisitions 
were substantial — who had found the substance 
and not the shadow. Alas ! it was only the 
Mirage. The years of enjoyment to which he 
had looked forward were filled with melancholy 
and dissatisfaction. Some important reforms 



70 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

which he had introduced into the government 
of India provoked opposition and raised up 
bitter enemies. An impeachment against him, 
contemplated in the House of Commons, threat- 
ened to strip him of all his wealth. It was with 
some difficulty quashed ; but Clive's spirits 
never recovered the blow. Having sought pro- 
sperity without reference to the favour of God, 
his mind, in the retrospect of life, could find no 
point of satisfaction on which it might repose. 
Wedded to glory, and pluming himself on his 
vast achievements, his pride was wounded and 
his feelings lacerated by the ungrateful treat- 
ment which he had received. Broken health, 
too, began to afflict him. He, who had con- 
quered so many provinces, was unable, ap- 
parently, to subdue his own spirit ; and poor 
amidst abundant wealth — wretched amidst a 
load of honours — the soldier of fortune termi- 
nated his life by his own hand. Such was the 
end of a military career brilliant with success, 
but uncontrolled by religious principle. He had 



THE HERO. 



71 



pursued "glory" as his end in life, and he 
had found it the Mirage. 

" Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his 
wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let 
not the rich man glory in his riches : but let him that glorieth 
glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I 
am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and 
righteousness, in the earth." — Jer. ix. 23, 24. 




THE STATESMAN. 




THE STATESMAN. 



Irom the career of the military hero, let 
us turn to that of the Statesman. He 
seeks his enjoyment in the gratifica- 
tion of ambition ; in administering the affairs 
of nations, and in commanding by his pa- 
tronage a crowd of adherents and dependants. 
From its very nature, this object of pursuit 
is necessarily limited to a few, and those 
men of high intellectual capacity. With the 
opportunity which it presents, however, of 
conferring large and extensive benefits on 
mankind, no career, when directed with an 



76 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

eye to the glory of God and the welfare of man- 
kind, might be more satisfactory than that of the 
statesman. There have been few in which the 
Mirage of life has been more apparent. Cardinal 
Wolsey, after climbing the highest round of 
ambition's ladder, was, in the evening of life, 
constrained to exclaim — that had he served 
his God as faithfully as he had done his 
king, He would not have abandoned him in 
his old age. The closing words of Colbert, 
the minister of Louis xiv., echoed the same- 
sentiment. The dying hours of Cardinal 
Mazarin, the ambitious French statesman, 
were clouded with gloom and chagrin. He 
wandered, we are told, along his splendid 
picture-gallery, bidding his works of art a 
mournful farewell, and exclaiming, " Must I 
quit all these?"* Necker, the celebrated 
minister of Louis xye, was such a favourite 
with the French nation, that he was hon- 

* Sec Lifts Last flours, published by the Religious Tract 
Society. 



THE STATESMAN. 7 J 

oured with this inscription on his door — 
" The residence of the adored minister." He 
was afterwards compelled to secure his safety 
by flight from the fickle people who had 
honoured him with almost idolatrous homage. 
The career of Warren Hastings, governor- 
general of India, is another apt illustration of 
the Mirage of political ambition. After tasting, 
for a series of years, the sweets of oriental 
luxury, and enjoying uncontrolled authority 
over millions of his fellow-creatures, he was at 
last stripped of his power ; and at a time when 
he reasonably anticipated honours from the 
hand of his sovereign, was exposed to a trial of 
nine years' duration, which left him deprived of 
the wealth he had by very equivocal means 
acquired. The late Lord Melville was likewise 
a memorable instance of the unsatisfactory 
character of worldly ambition. We speak not 
here of the impeachment which embittered the 
close of his life, but of the period of his un- 
clouded political splendour. The late Sir John 



jS THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 

Sinclair had passed a few days with him at his 
country villa, and on a new years morning 
entered his apartment to offer him the custom- 
ary compliments of the season. He found the 
statesman perusing some important documents, 
and wished him a happy new year. On 
receiving the salutation, Lord Melville, after a 
pause, replied, "It has need to be a happier 
one than the last, for I scarcely remember a 
happy day in it." Coining as this did from the 
lips of a man envied by all for his greatness — 
"My father," says the narrator of the anec- 
dote, " would often quote it to us, as a proof of 
the vanity of human wishes." As a still more 
striking instance, however, of the cares and 
perplexities which haunt the path of ambition, 
we select as our leading illustration the cele- 
brated William Pitt, or, The Statesman. 

This remarkable man was the son of a no 
less remarkable father, the great Karl of Chat- 
ham, and was trained under his eye to public 



THE STATESMAN. 51 

life. When a boy, he displayed remarkable 
powers of mind, and gave prognostics of future 
eminence. He entered parliament a mere 
youth, but aided by everything which could 
encourage hopes of a brilliant career. His 
sovereign, the senate, and the people were alike 
disposed to regard him with favour for his 
parent's sake. His first speech confirmed their 
anticipations. No sooner had he delivered it 
than public opinion strongly declared itself, and 
all parties confessed that the mantle o'f his 
father had fallen upon him. At the age of 
twenty-four, a period when the generality of 
young men are discharging duties of a proba- 
tionary character, he was made prime minister. 
He was now first in position, as he was first in 
intellectual power, among the commons of 
England. Let a young man dwell upon his 
lot, and he will be apt to think that it contained 
all the elements of happiness. He was em- 
phatically the favourite of his sovereign, to a 
degree which it had been the privilege of few 



82 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

before him to enjoy. He was the idol of a 
numerous party in the senate, and of a large 
and influential body of supporters in the 
kingdom. The mightiest intellects bent before 
him, and the highest offices were in his patron- 
age. Each morning when he rose, he was 
entitled to assert that, in all the vast empire of 
England, the sun shone on no one who was in 
reality, however he might be in name, "more 
powerful than himself. Add to all this the 
possession of youth and the prospect of length 
of days, and we have drawn, in the world's esti- 
mation, a picture containing much to envy. 
And yet even this was but the Mirage. 

It was deception, as regarded his own 
personal enjoyment during his career of great- 
ness. In vain should we look for any proofs of 
this in the biographies of Pitt, published by 
his political admirers, shortly after his death. 
There we meet chiefly a narrative of flattering 
success.* A few years ago, however, an 

* But sec Edinburgh Review^ July [862. 



THE STATESMAN. 03 

account of his domestic life appeared in the 
memoirs of the lady who had superintended the 
arrangements of his household. " People," said 
this writer, " little knew what Mr. Pitt had to 
do. Up at eight in the morning, with people 
enough to see for a week. Obliged to talk all 
the time he was at breakfast; receiving first one 
and then another, until four o'clock. Then 
eating a mutton chop; hurrying off to the House, 
and there badgered and compelled to waste his 
lungs till two or three in the morning. Who 
could stand it ? After this, heated as he was, 
and having eaten nothing in a manner, he 
would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, 
Long, and such like, and then go to bed and 
get three or four hours' sleep, to renew the 
same thing the next day, and the next. During 
the sitting of parliament, what a life he led ! 
Roused from his sleep, with a despatch from 
Lord Melville ; then down to Windsor ; then, if 
he had half an hour to spare, trying to swallow 
something. Mr. Adams with a paper ; Mr. 



84 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

Long with another. Then, with a little bottle 
of cordial confection in his pocket, off to the 
House until three or four in the morning. Then 
home for a hot supper for two or three hours 
more, to talk over what was to be done next 
day; and wine — and wine — and wine. Scarcely 
up next morning, when, tat-tat-tat, twenty or 
thirty people, one after another, and the horses 
walking before the door from two till sunset, 
waiting for him. It was murder." Such was 
the private life of a prime minister, whose 
position was the object of envy to numbers. 
Alas ! how little was it to be coveted. 

But the life of this great man was in other 
respects also an exemplification of the vanity of 
human pursuits. " During his long career of 
office," says one of his warmest admirers, "he 
could scarcely get a gleam of success to cheer 
him." He was disappointed too in an attach- 
ment which he had formed to a young lady of 
rank and great personal attractions. Added to 
this, his affairs gradually became embarrassed, 



THE STATESMAN. 85 

and he found his spirits and energies depressed 
by a load of debt. His weakened frame suc- 
cumbed soon afterwards to an attack of disease. 
His temper, also, was soured by the ingratitude 
which he experienced. "All the peers," says 
the writer above quoted, "whom he had made 
deserted him, and half of those whom he had 
served returned his kindness by going over to 
his enemies." 

The final stroke at last came. A brilliant 
effort of his genius to crush the hydra-headed 
power of Napoleon was defeated by the battle 
of Austerlitz. Chagrined, disappointed, crowded 
with anxieties, this blow was too much for the 
statesman to bear, and he found the hand of 
death upon him. Had he then the consola- 
tions of religion to rest upon? Ah no! On 
his dying bed he is stated to have exclaimed, 
" I fear I have neglected prayer too much to 
make it available on a death-bed." He soon 
afterwards died. "In the adjoining room," 
says a contemporary writer, "he lay a corpse in 



86 THE MIRAGE OE LIFE. 

the ensuing week; and it is a singular and melan- 
choly circumstance, resembling the stories told 
of William the Conqueror's deserted state at 
his decease, that some one in the neighbour- 
hood having sent a messenger to enquire after 
Mr. Pitt's state, the latter found the wicket 
open, then the door of the house, and walked 
through the rooms till he reached the bed on 
which the minister's body lay lifeless, the sole 
tenant of the mansion of which the doors a few 
hours before had been darkened by crowds of 
suitors, alike obsequious and importunate — the 
vultures whose instinct leads them to haunt 
only the carcases of living ministers."* He 
died in his forty-seventh year, on the anniver- 
sary of the day on which he had first entered 
parliament. What a difference was there 

* The author of the Life of Lady Hester Stanhope gives, but 
as we think erroneously, the passage as an extract from Lord 
Brougham's Lives of Eminent Statesmen. The incident carries 
with it, however, internal evidence of its probability, from the 
confused and disorderly manner in which the arrangements of 
Mr. Pitt's household were managed by his niece. Lady Hester 
Stanhope. 



THE STATESMAN. Sj 

between the buoyant youth of twenty and the 
careworn statesman of forty-seven! Before the 
eyes of the one sparkled a long vista of political 
enjoyments and honours; before the eyes of the 
other were the anxieties and cares which had 
attended them when grasped. He had too 
much followed as his object in life unsanctified 
ambition, and he had found it the Mirage. 

"How do these events," wrote at the time 
Mr. Wilberforce, the friend of Pitt ; " how do 
these events tend to illustrate the vanity of 
worldly greatness ! Poor Pitt, I almost believe, 
died of a broken heart. A broken heart ! 
What! was he like Otway, or Collins, or Chat- 
terton, who had not so much as a needful com- 
plement of food to sustain their bodies, while 
the consciousness of unrewarded talents and 
mortified pride pressed them within, and ate 
out their very souls? Was he even like 
Suwarroff, another most useful example, basely 
deserted and driven into exile by the sove- 
reign he had so long served? No; he was 



88 



THE MIRAGE OF 1. 1 li- 



the highest in power and estimation in the 
whole kingdom ; the favourite, I believe, on 
the whole, both of king and people. Yes ; 
this man, who died of a broken heart, was First 
Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the 
Exchequer!" 

" Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, 
and on the labour that I had laboured to do : and, behold, all 
was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
the sun. 1 ' — Eccles. ii. u. 




THE ORATOR. 




THE ORATOR. 



Ilosely connected with the pursuits of 
the statesman are those of the Orator. 
To shine in the senate, to dazzle by 
brilliant talent, and to sway contending par- 
ties by commanding intellect, constitute his 
happiness. When directed to right ends and 
influenced by right principles, the career of the 
orator is not to be condemned. His office is 
to denounce vice, and to shield virtue ; and, 
like one who used this talent for Christian 
purposes, — the eminent Wilberforce, — to aid 
by eloquence the cause of evangelical truth. 
As an illustration, however, of its inability, 
G 2 



92 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

when unsanctified, to produce happiness, we 
proceed, omitting minor examples, to sketch 
the career of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 
or, The Orator, 

This remarkable man was early distin- 
guished for mental ability. To use the lan- 
guage of the poet — 

" His mind was an essence, compounded with art 
From the finest and best of all other men's powers : 
He ruled like a wizard the world of the heart, 
And could call up its sunshine or draw down its showers." 

Like some other men of genius, he was 
averse to application, and has been well de- 
scribed as having, through life, acted upon two 
rules : " Never do to-day what you can put off 
till to-morrow;" and, " Never do yourself what 
you can get another person to do for you." 
His early course of frivolity and gaiety might 
of itself have pointed a moral ; but it is with 
his career as an orator that we have now to 



THE ORATOR. 93 

do. Although sprung from the middle ranks, 
and possessed only of slender means, he was 
enabled ere long to obtain a seat in Parlia- 
ment. Shortly after gaining this distinction, 
the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, for 
malversation in his office as governor-general 
of India, took place. It was an occasion 
which called forth the eloquence of Burke, and 
which developed the highest powers of the 
eminent statesmen who adorned that period 
of English history. Westminster Hall was 
the scene of the trial, and that place, at the 
early stages of the proceedings, was crowded 
with all that was great and intellectual in the 
land. " The whole scene," says Sheridan's 
biographer, " was one of those pageants in the 
drama of life which show us what shadows we 
are, and what shadows we pursue." On this 
grand arena for intellectual display Sheridan 
shone conspicuous above all competitors. A 
speech which he delivered drew forth the 



94 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

following acknowledgment from one who lis- 
ts o 

tened to it : " All the various species of ora- 
tory, every kind of eloquence that had been 
heard either in ancient or modern times, what- 
ever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity 
of the senate, or the morality of the pulpit 
could furnish, had not been equal to what the 
house had that day heard in Westminster 
Hall. From poetry up to eloquence there 
was not a specimen of composition of which 
some variety might not have been culled from 
that speech." 

Wonderful, however, as this oratorical effort 
was, it fell short in its results of another, 
which, in the course of the same cause, Sheri- 
dan made on the floor of the House of Com- 
mons. Not only did his speech draw forth 
the applause of all parties in that house, but 
it seemed to have entranced them, and bound 
them with a magician's spell ; for they were 
compelled to adjourn their deliberations to 



THE ORATOR. 97 

another day, until the excitement produced 
by it had disappeared. When Sheridan sat 
down, Mr. Burke rose, and said it was the 
most astonishing effort of eloquence, wit, and 
argument united, which he had ever heard. 
Mr. Fox stated that all that he too had ever 
heard or read, when compared with it, dwin- 
dled into nothing, and vanished like vapour 
before the sun. Mr. Pitt acknowledged that 
it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or 
modern times, and possessed everything that 
genius or art could furnish to agitate and 
control the human mind. Sir William Dol- 
ben immediately moved an adjournment of 
the house, confessing that in the state of mind 
in which Mr. Sheridan's speech had left him, 
it was impossible to give any determinate opi- 
nion. Nothing but a miracle, he thought, 
could have determined him to vote against 
Mr. Hastings ; but he had just felt the opera- 
tion of such a miracle. 



98 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

Sheridan's fame as an orator was now the 
great topic of public conversation. "What 
my feelings are," wrote his brother, "you may 
imagine. It is with some difficulty that I 
can let down my mind to think of anything 
else but your speech." His father, as he 
walked the streets, was gratified by persons 
turning round and pointing to him as the 
parent of the great orator. Sheridan now 
stood on the pinnacle of his glory. He was 
the favourite of his political party, the in- 
timate companion of his prince and of the 
highest nobility. He had gained the most 
flattering distinctions. But his talents were 
unsanctified ; and he was destined to feel, by 
bitter experience, that the objects which he 
had so keenly pursued were deceptive as the 
Mirage. 

Unsustained by religious principle, he 
plunged into pleasures and expenses which 
left him a ruined man. Old age came upon 



THE ORATOR. 99 

him, and found him impoverished and de- 
serted by his friends. " His distresses/' says 
his biographer, " increased every day. He 
was driven to part with what he most 
valued. His books, presented to him by 
various friends, now stood in their splendid 
bindings on the shelves of the pawnbrokers. 
The handsome cup given him by the electors 
of Stafford shared the same fate ; and the 
portrait of his first wife, if not actually sold, 
vanished away from his eyes into other 
hands." One of the most humiliating trials 
was, however, yet to follow. He was ar- 
rested for debt, and carried to a sponging- 
house. This abode formed a sad contrast to 
the princely halls of which he had before been 
the most brilliant and favoured guest. The 
unhappy man burst into a flood of tears. He 
was released ; but only to be exposed again to 
similar trials. " Oh, let me see you," he wrote, 
on another occasion of the same kind, to a 
friend; "I find things so settled that 150/. 



Lot. 



IOO THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

would remove every difficulty. ... I am 
absolutely undone and broken-hearted." Mis- 
fortunes crowded round his dying bed, and his 
last moments were haunted by fear of a prison. 
Forsaken by his gay associates, dispirited and 
world-weary, he closed his eyes in gloom and 
sorrow. 

No sooner was he dead, however, than 
many a titled and wealthy associate, who had 
failed to minister to his sickness, flocked to 
attend his funeral — conduct which drew forth 
the indignant, though too indiscriminating, 
remonstrance of his compatriot Moore : 

" Oh ! it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow. 
And friendships so false in the great and high-born ; 
To think what a long line of titles may follow 
The relics of him who died friendless and lorn : 
How proud they can press to the funeral array 
Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow ; 
How bailiffs may seize the last blanket to-day, 
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow.'' 

Such was the career of the orator. Fame, 
popularity, and intellectual greatness had all 



THE ORATOR. 



IOI 



been his ; but, directed to the service of this 
world, and animated by its spirit, they had 
proved to their possessor false as the Mirage. 

" Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
cymbal." — I Cor. xiii. I. 




THE ARTIST. 




THE ARTIST. 



St may be said that the individuals 
whose career we have noticed in the 
preceding pages sought their happi- 
ness in objects of a material and secular 
character. Let us shift our 'sketches, there- 
fore, and select, as our next examples, some 
whose pursuits were of a more purely in- 
tellectual order. First in this class we shall 
place the Artist. His enjoyment lies in 
indulging the conceptions of his genius, and, 
by a subordinate species of creative power, 
making them glow on the canvas or breathe 

H 



106 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

in the marble. Although capable, when 
rightly and religiously directed, of being 
eminently profitable ; yet, when pursued, on 
merely worldly principles, the career of the 
artist has often furnished a painful illustration 
of the Mirage of life. 

Some years ago, a young artist, whose 
death occurred under painful circumstances, 
left as his closing testimony the mournful 
sentence — " Life, they say, is sweet ; I have 
found it bitter." The sentiment has been 
echoed by many others. The biography of 
the late David Scott, a gifted Scottish painter, 
seems indeed a comment upon these words. 
" The love of art," he wrote, " has become 
to me a torment, an insatiable demon." He 
plotted, we are told, with the sleeplessness of 
a poet, and laboured with the energy of an 
enthusiast. His pictures, however, in almost 
unbroken succession, returned to him unsold, 
and he died at the early age of forty- two, with 
the dream and the hope of his life unfulfilled. 



THE ARTIST. IC>7 

Proctor, a young British sculptor, may be 
selected as affording another illustration of 
the Mirage of art. His early essay in 
marble — Diomede torn to pieces by wild 
horses — was considered, by competent judges, 
to approach, in grandeur of thought, the 
Phidiac period of Greek design. It was 
however, above the comprehension of ordinary 
visitors. It was carried back, unsold, to the 
young sculptor ; who, in the anguish of 
disappointment, broke in pieces with his own 
hand the work of sleepless hours, on which 
he had exhausted his little means of support 
He died, as brighter days were dawning on 
him, from disease brought on by want and 
agitated passions. 

Another name, in connection with this part 
of our subject, will occur to many readers 
as a still more striking illustration — that of 
Benjamin Robert Haydon, or, The Artist. 

Haydon was born in one of the seaports 
h 2 



108 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

in the West of England towards the close 
of the last century. Meeting accidentally 
with the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
on painting, he read them through at a 
single sitting, and determined from that 
moment to be a painter. In vain did his 
friends endeavour to alter his decision ; he 
met all opposition with a torrent of sarcasm. 
In 1802, at the age of eighteen, with only 
twenty pounds in his pocket, he started for 
London, full of enthusiasm and buoyant with 
youthful hope. A portrait of him, painted 
at this early period, has been preserved. 
" There is," says a writer, when contrasting 
it with another likeness of the artist, taken 
only a few days before his death ; " there is 
a melancholy interest in contemplating these 
portraits; alike, and yet how different! In 
the interval between them, forty-one years of 
an anxious life had rolled over the head of 
the ambitious and sensitive man of genius. 
The buoyant hopes and bright prospects oi 



THE ARTIST. I 1 I 

the youthful aspirant after fame had dis- 
appeared in the strongly-marked lines and 
careworn features of the world-weary and 
disappointed man of sixty." 

Haydon was not long in London before 
his genius was discovered. Young as he was, 
he was not contented with following the beaten 
track, but aimed at founding a new school of 
painting. The picture of the Judgment of 
Solomon was, ere long, produced by him. It 
brought the artist 800/. and obtained ' great 
applause. The celebrated painter West was 
so affected when looking at it, that he shed 
tears. 

Haydon's painting of our Saviour's entrance 
into Jerusalem was at last produced. It 
attracted a crowd of visitors, and yielded 
the successful artist a rich harvest, both of 
money and reputation. His fame was now at 
its zenith. A writer of the day complimented 
him by styling him the Raphael of his age. 
Keats and Mitford composed verses in his 



112 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

honour, and Wordsworth conferred on him 
the distinction of a sonnet. He had grasped, 
then, the fame which as a youth he had so 
eagerly longed for. Unlike many artists, he 
had not been doomed to toil on in neglect, 
but had had his merits recognised by the 
age in which he lived. Had he then found 
the secret of happiness, which so many had 
missed ? Ah, no ! he, too, had only chased 
the Mirage. 

An unhappy disposition provoked enemies. 
Embarrassments, too, in quick succession 
flowed in upon him. His best works were 
achieved under circumstances of privation : 
one of them when he was a prisoner for debt. 
He succeeded in educating his children only 
by great exertions and extraordinary self- 
denial. He was mortified, also, by seeing the 
public manifest a distaste for his peculiar style 
of art ; and each year he was doomed, with 
sickening heart, to see the wave of popularity 
recede farther and farther from his feet. He 



THE ARTIST. II3 

at last determined to make one more effort to 
woo back the favour he had lost, by an ex- 
hibition of some of his most elaborate works 
at the Egyptian Hall ; and no passage in 
the history of neglected artists is more melan- 
choly than this scene in his life. Having 
made his preparations at some expense, and 
earnestly appealed to the public, the poor painter 
anxiously waited the result. 

Let his diary, however, tell his story. It 
is headed by this startling quotation from a 
speech of Canning relative to the fall of 
Napoleon : " All is but folly : his final de- 
struction can neither be averted nor delayed ; 
and his unseasonable mummeries will but 
serve to take away all dignity from the 
drama, and render his fall at once terrible 
and ridiculous." 

The opening entry in the journal is as 
follows : "April 4. The first day of my 
exhibition opened. It rained all day, and 
no one came. . . . How different would it 



114 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

have been twenty-six years ago ! The rain 
would not then have kept them away." A 
few weeks afterwards he again writes : "My 
receipts are only i/. $s. 6d. An advertisement 
of a finer description could not have been 
written to catch the public ; but not one 
shilling more was added to the receipts. 
They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb " 
(the well-known dwarf of that name, who 
was exhibited in an adjoining apartment) ; 
" they push, they fight, they cry, ' help,' and 
4 murder.' They see my bills and caravans, 
but do not read them. Their eyes are 

on them, but their senses are gone 

My situation is now one of extreme peril. 
Involved in debt, and mortified by the little 
sympathy shown to me by the public .... I 
have just received a lawyers letter. I sat 
down to my palette under an irritable influ- 
ence. My brain became confused, as I fore- 
saw misery, ruin, and a prison before me." 
It is not necessary to add much more, for 



THE ARTIST. I I 5 

the result is well known. The mind of the 
unhappy artist gave way ; and death, in one 
of its most appalling forms, stepped in and 
closed the scene. Not the least impressive 
portion of Haydon's journal are its closing 
words: "May 14. This day forty-two years ago 
I left my native Plymouth for London. I have 
closed my exhibition, with a loss of in/." 

How different the concluding from the 
opening scene of the artist's life! How 
painful the contrast, between the youthful 
aspirant of 1802 and the careworn painter of 
1846! Where now were his ambitious hopes 
and views ? All dissolved in empty air ; and 
proved, by painful experience, to have been 
unsubstantial as the Mirage. 

"It is impossible," adds an able writer of 
the day, when commenting on the melancholy 
fate of Haydon, "to read, without feelings of 
inexpressible pain, the notes which this un- 
fortunate gentleman has left of his daily 
hopes and emotions, his successive struggles 



I 1 6 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

and disappointments, through the last month 
of a cheerless professional existence. With 
exertions of the most exhausting kind he 
had completed a laborious task, to which he 
looked forward with the natural confidence of 
his profession as a release from his per- 
plexities and a recompense of his pains. He 
offered to the public the first of a series of 
paintings on a noble and national subject, 
conceived with grandeur, and directed towards 
the highest objects of his art. When the 
day of trial came, he saw his hopes dashed 
and his efforts spurned ; while the patronage 
which would have ransomed his pencil and 
restored his peace was lavished on an ex- 
hibition of a most puerile and offensive 
character. The display of a dwarf attracted 
hordes of gaping idlers, who poured into the 
yawning pockets of a showman a stream of 
wealth, one tithe of which would have re- 
deemed an honourable English artist from 
wretchedness and death. It is terrible to think 



THE ARTIST. 



117 



that, in the midst of the London season, in 
the heart of the greatest city, and under the 
eyes of the wealthiest people in the world, 
such should have been his lot." 

" And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I 
withheld not my heart from any joy ; for my heart rejoiced in all 
my labour : and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I 
looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the 
labour that I had laboured to do : and, behold, all was vanity 
and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." 
— Eccles. ii. 10, 11. 




thp: 



MAN OF LITERATURE, 




THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 



Ilosely allied with the pleasures of art 
are those of Literature, and in these 
perhaps we might, if anywhere, have 
expected to find an exemption from that law 
which has stamped on every unsanctified en- 
joyment the mark of vanity and vexation of 
spirit. But even here has that law been 
found in operation ; and, amidst the mass of 
persons who have been gifted with great 
literary powers, it would be easy to adduce 
illustrations of the solemn moral which it has 
been the object of these pages to inculcate. 
" If to know wisdom," says a popular living 
I 



122 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

writer,* " were to practise it ; if fame brought 
true dignity and peace of mind ; if happiness 
consisted in surrounding the imagination with 
ideal beauty, a literary life would be the most 
enviable which the lot of this world affords. 
But the truth is far otherwise. Look at the 
biography of authors ! Except the Newgate 
Calendar, it is the most sickening chapter in 
the history of man." As one of the most 
striking instances of the Mirage of literature 
in modern times — -as a convincing evidence 
of the inefficacy of the highest genius to 
secure permanent happiness to its possessor — 
we select, as our next type, Sir Walter 
Scott, or, The Man of Literature. 

All influences which could promise hap- 
piness or success were crowded around this 
remarkable man. His professional pursuits 
furnished him with ample leisure and an 
income bordering on affluence. His natural 

* Thomas Carlyle. 



THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 1 25 

disposition, which was singularly amiable and 
generous, and accompanied by a chivalrous 
sense of honour, procured him the attach- 
ment of numerous friends. He enjoyed, too, 
in a remarkable degree, the sweets of a happy 
home. Thus, on grounds entirely indepen- 
dent of his literary powers, he was in posses- 
sion of many of the elements of worldly com- 
fort. In addition, however, to the blessings we 
have enumerated, he was gifted with a genius 
of the highest order. Much as the Christian 
must deplore the misapplication, in many 
respects, of that genius, he must acknowledge 
the appropriateness of the eulogium : 

" Brother of Homer, and of him 
Who struck the lyre by Avon's stream, 
Time shall through many a cycle be 
Ere he shall see a fourth like thee." 

Never, perhaps, in any period of the world's 
history, did literary talent receive a homage 
so universal as that of Scott. His reputation 



126 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

was coextensive, not only with the English 
language, but with the boundaries of civiliza- 
tion. It has been the lot of many meritorious 
authors to be unable to procure a profitable 
return for their writings. In one year, however, 
Scott's productions yielded him the enormous 
revenue of 15,000/. Other writers have been 
condemned to wait a lifetime before they saw 
their works approved ; but Scott's sprang into 
popularity the first day they issued from the 
press, and procured their author an admiration 
that was almost idolatrous. The king con- 
ferred on him a baronetcy, accompanying that 
dignity with special marks of royal favour. 
When he travelled abroad, his appearance 
created an enthusiasm, and attracted a crowd of 
spectators, more like that which attends the 
passage of a monarch than the movements of 
a private individual. "If his carriage," says 
his biographer, describing Scott's visit to 
Ireland, "was recognised, the street was sure to 



THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 12 J 

be crowded before he came out again, so as to 
make his departure as slow as a procession. 
When he entered a street, the watchword was 
passed down like lightning on both sides, and 
the shopkeepers and their wives stood bowing 
all the way down ; while the mob and boys 
huzzaed as at the chariot-wheels of a conqueror." 
All the good things, as they are termed, of 
this life were in Scott's possession. His 
mansion at Abbotsford realized the highest 
conceptions of a poetical imagination. "It 
seems," says one w T ho visited, " like a poem in 
stone." " This house," said another distin- 
guished writer, " is like places that we dream 
about." The company which crowded around 
the man of genius was no less wonderful. The 
highest nobleman felt honoured in being allowed 
to take a place at his board, around which were 
collected from every part of the kingdom 
persons eminent in the various walks of life. 
Each day produced some novelty. Now a 



128 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

traveller recounted the wonders he had wit- 
nessed in foreign lands. Now a philosopher, 
like Sir Humphry Davy, detailed recent dis- 
coveries in science. Now a poet, or a painter, 
gave animation to the conversation by his 
genius. All sources of intellectual enjoyment 
were crowded together. It was worldly plea- 
sure in its most concentrated form ; and well 
might one of the visitors exclaim, " Surely Sir 
Walter Scott is, or ought to be, a happy man." 
And yet all this was but the Mirage. Feelingly 
does one, who was a witness of the pleasures of 
this man of genius in his palmiest days, exclaim, 
" Death has laid a heavy hand on that happy 
circle. Bright eyes long since closed in dust, 
gay voices for ever silenced, seem to haunt me 
as I write." A shock of commercial adversity 
ruined Sir Walter, and dispersed for ever the 
brilliant assemblies which had gathered round 
his board. The death of one who was dearest 
to him followed close upon this blow. What 



THE MAN OF LITERATURE. T2Q, 

consolation could literature then afford him in 
the hour of trial ? Let Sir Walter's own touch- 
ing words reply : " When I think," he writes, at 
a time when leaving Abbotsford apparently for 
ever ; " when I think what this place now is, 
with what it has been not long ago, I think my 
heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of all 
my family, I am an impoverished and em- 
barrassed man." At another time he writes, 
" Death has closed the dark avenue of love and 
friendship. I look at them as through the 
grated door of a burial-place, filled with monu- 
ments of those who once were dear to me, and 
with no other wish than that it may open for 
me at no distant period." Not long after, he 
writes in the strain, " Some new object of 
complaint comes every moment. Sicknesses 
come thicker and thicker; friends are fewer 
and fewer. The recollection of youth, health, 
and powers of activity, neither improved nor 
enjoyed, is a poor strain of comfort. The best 



130 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

is, the long halt will arrive at length, and close 
all." Such was the confession of one who had 
drunk so largely of the world's cup of enjoyment. 
Oh, how emphatically does it warn those whose 
hearts are still set upon similar vanities ! 

The closing scene at last came, and is not 
less touching than the preceding passages. A 
most honourable attempt to pay off his creditors 
had, by overtaxing his energies, brought on 
incurable disease. Sir Walter requested, we 
are told, to be wheeled to his desk. His 
daughter put his pen into his hand, but his 
fingers refused to do their office. Silent tears 
rolled down his cheeks. " Take me back to 
my own room," he said. " There is no rest for 
Sir Walter but in his grave." A few days after- 
wards he died. In such gloomy clouds did 
the sun of the man of literature set. Otway 
died of starvation ; Voltaire, in the height of 
his literary glory, wished that he had never 
been born : but none of these instances pro- 



THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 



131 



claim so touchingly as the career of Sir Walter 
Scott, that the highest genius, when not sanc- 
tified by being devoted to the glory of God, 
is, in its results, illusive as the Mirage. 

" The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry ? All 
flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of 
the field : the grass withereth, the flower fadeth : because the 
Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it : surely the people is grass. 
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth : but the word of our God 
shall stand for ever." — Isaiah xl. 6-8. 







THE POET. 




THE POET. 



JImidst other intellectual pursuits in 
which happiness has been sought, the 
career of the Poet may be next ad- 
verted to. His delights lie in the cultivation of 
a creative imagination, and in the enjoyment 
of those pleasures which can only be tasted 
by a mind of a refined order and delicate 
structure. When the poet's gifts have been 
devoted to the glory of God, they have 
proved to be eminently profitable and delight- 
ful. When cultivated in an irreligious and 
worldly spirit, however, experience has shown^ 
by more than one painful instance, that a 
highly gifted bard may be a miserable man. 



1 .V 



6 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 



The life of Savage, the friend of Johnson, will 
be familiar to the student of English literature. 
The course of Chatterton is not less mournful. 
Full of youthful promise, he repaired to 
London, to commence, as he expected, a suc- 
cessful literary career. " What a glorious 
prospect awaits me !" he wrote on his arrival ; 
yet within a few months he was buried as a 
common pauper from Shoe Lane workhouse. 
Equally sad associations are connected with 
the poet Burns. " Save me from the horrors 
of a jail," were almost his last words. "It 
will be some time," he wrote in his final 
illness, " before I tune my lyre again. I have 
of late only known existence by the pressure 
of the heavy hand of sickness, and have 
counted time by the repercussions of pain. 
I close my eyes in misery, and open them 
without hope. Pale, emaciated, and feeble, 
you would not know me if you saw me ; and 
my spirits fled — fled 1" In the biography of 
the poet Campbell, who had in early youth 



THE POET. 137 

sung " The Pleasures of Hope," a touching 
instance occurs of the emptiness of poetic 
fame. In the evening of life, the poet thus 
spoke to a circle of friends : " I am alone 
in the world. My wife and the child of my 
hopes are dead. My only surviving child is 
consigned to a living tomb " (he was the 
inmate of a lunatic asylum). "My old friends, 
brothers, and sisters are dead — all but one, 
and she too is dying. My last hopes are 
blighted. As for fame, it is a bubble that 
must soon burst. Earned for others, shared 
with others, it was sweet ; but, at my age, 
to my own solitary experience it is bitter. 
Left in my chamber alone with myself, is it 
wonderful my philosophy at times takes fright; 
that I rush into company ; resort to that 
which blunts but heals no pang ; and then, 
sick of the world, and dissatisfied with my- 
self, shrink back into solitude ?" 

As a far more striking instance, however, 
of the vanity of poetical genius and the empti- 

K 



1$8 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

ness of mere worldly fame, when ennobled 
by no divine aim or purpose, we select, as 
our type, Lord Byron, or, The Poet. 

Upon this remarkable man were heaped 
many of those gifts, of nature and of fortune, 
which are, by the world, so highly prized. 
He was by birth noble, tracing his descent 
from a line of ancestors which stretched 
back to a remote period of English history. 
Although not wealthy, he was left in 
possession of an income which, to a well- 
regulated mind, would have secured indepen- 
dence. His manners, when he wished to 
please, are stated to have been singularly 
winning and attractive. His smile disarmed 
opposition, and invited friendship. His exter- 
nal appearance harmonized with the order of 
his mind. He not only was, but looked the 
poet. The pencil of the artist and the chisel 
of the sculptor were alike employed to de- 
lineate his countenance as a model of classic 



THE POET. 141 

grace. The talents intrusted to his steward- 
ship were great : how melancholy, in surveying 
his short career, to observe their misapplica- 
tion ! And how different would have been the 
result, had they been guided by the wisdom 
that is from above, instead of that which " is 
earthly, sensual, devilish !" 

His poetical genius was of a high class, 
capable of describing external nature, and the 
play of human passions, in a manner which 
stirred the deepest emotions of the heart. 
Byron early felt within himself aspirations 
after literary eminence. When a mere youth 
he wrote— 

" The desire in my bosom for fame 
Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise: 
Could I soar with the phoenix, on ashes of flame, 
With it I would wish to expire in the blaze." 

These desires were speedily gratified. After 
a passing disappointment, caused by the 
failure of some minor poetical effusions, he 
published his first great poem. " The effect 



142 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

of it," says a writer, " was electric. His fame 
had not to wait for any of the ordinary gra- 
dations, but seemed to spring up, like the 
palace of a fairy tale, in a single night." His 
work became the theme of every tongue. At 
his door many of the leading men of the day 
presented themselves. From morning till night 
the most flattering testimonies of success 
crowded his table. " He found himself," says 
Mr. Macaulay, " on the highest pinnacle of 
literary fame. There is scarcely an instance 
in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an 
eminence. Everything that could stimulate, 
everything that could gratify the strongest 
propensities of our nature, were at once 
offered to him : the gaze of a hundred draw- 
ing-rooms, the acclamations of the whole 
nation, and the applause of applauded men." 
" In place of the desert," continues his bio- 
grapher, " which London had been to him a 
few weeks before, he not only saw the whole 
splendid interior of high life thrown open to 



THE POET. I43 

him, but found himself the most distinguished 
object among its illustrious crowds." A short 
time before the publication of his poem, 
Byron had taken his seat amidst the hereditary 
legislators of his country. With genius, with 
popularity, and with rank, how brilliant the 
prospect which now lay before him ! Yet it 
proved but the deception of the Mirage. 

In that with which, above all other points, 
true happiness is so essentially connected — 
religious principle — his mind was singularly 
deficient : it had been darkened by scepticism. 
When a youth, some passing religious convic- 
tions appear to have agitated him ; for he 
wrote at that season a poem containing the 
following lines : — 

" Father of light, on Thee I call ; 
Thou seest my soul is dark within ; 
Thou, who canst mark the sparrows fall, 
Avert from me the death of sin." 

If spiritual anxiety did for a moment cross 
his mind, it was soon obliterated by the irre- 



144 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

gularity of his moral conduct. The memorials 
of his early years are full of those records of 
wasted seasons of usefulness and squandered 
talents which lay up such a store of reproach 
for after-life. " The average hour of rising," 
says one of his companions at Newstead Abbey, 
" was one o'clock. It was two before break- 
fast was concluded." Frivolous amusements 
consumed the remaining hours, until the com- 
pany, at seven, sat down to an entertainment, 
which was prolonged till two or three in the 
morning. The finest wines were abundantly 
supplied ; a cup, fashioned out of a human 
skull, forming an unhallowed chalice out of 
which the guests were occasionally expected to 
drink. The result of this life was such as 
might have been anticipated — inward dissatis- 
faction. To use the poet's own language — 

"He felt the fulness of satiety," 

and he quitted his native shores for foreign 
travel, in the hope of supplying his weary 



THE POET. 145 

spirit with fresh excitement ; but all in vain. 
Though he carried with him a genius deeply 
imbued with poetical power, he returned to 
England chagrined and sick at heart. When 
his travels were concluded, he thus wrote : — 
" Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent 
to public ; solitary, and without the wish to 
be social ; I am returning home without a 
hope, and almost without a desire." 

Fresh literary triumphs failed to secure 
the happiness which he sought ; nor was he 
more successful in finding it in a marriage 
which he soon afterwards contracted. He saw, 
to use his own language, his household gods 
shivered around him. Nine executions for 
debt entered his dwelling within a twelve- 
month, and, at the end of that period, a separa- 
tion ensued between his wife and himself. 
Retiring abroad, he plunged afresh in streams 
of sinful pleasure. His life became a miserable 
animal existence — the source of wretchedness 
to himself. He was, indeed, sick of it. " If 



I46 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

I were to live over again," he writes, " I do 
not know what I would change in my life, 
except not to have lived at all." Similar senti- 
ments were expressed in his poetry : — 

" Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er the days from anguish free ; 
And know, what ever thou hast been, 
; Tis something better not to be." 

The whole of his poetry, indeed, continued to 
bear the impress of his morbid spirit. " Never 
had any writer," says a critic, " so vast a com- 
mand of the whole eloquence of scorn, misan- 
thropy, and despair. That Marah was never 
dry. No heart could sweeten, no draughts 
exhaust, its perennial waters of bitterness. 
From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, 
there was not a single note of human anguish 
of which he was not master. He always de- 
scribed himself as a man whose capacity for 
happiness was gone, and could not be re- 
stored." Restless and dissatisfied, he pursued 
new objects, and betook himself to a visionary 



THE POET. 147 

scheme for the political regeneration of Greece 
— a country which had attracted his poetical 
sympathies. Fresh disappointments awaited 
him in this scene of action, and his heart's 
aspirations after enjoyment were again blasted. 
On the last birthday which he was destined to 
see, he thus described, in touching lines, his 
own lonely and miserable condition : — 

" My days are in the yellow leaf, 
The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone. 

The fire that in my bosom plays 
Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 
Xo torch is kindled at its blaze, 
A funeral pile." 

The life of the poet was now, however, draw- 
ing to a close. Shortly after composing these 
verses he was arrested by the hand of disease, 
and his illness terminated fatally. The death- 
bed of this highly-gifted man was a painful 
spectacle. " I had never before felt," says an 
eye-witness of it, " as I felt that evening. 



I48 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

There was the gifted Lord Byron — who had been 
the object of universal attention, who had even 
as a youth been intoxicated with the idolatry 
of men — gradually expiring, and almost for- 
saken, without even the consolation of breath- 
ing out his last sigh in the arms of some dear 
friend. His habitation was weather-tight ; but 
that was all the comfort his deplorable room 
afforded him." No gleam of joy, of peace, or 
hope, rose upon that melancholy scene ; no 
prayer for forgiveness ascended. The Divine 
Redeemer was but once mentioned, and then 
only in an exclamation wrung forth by pain. 
The dying poet murmured some broken and 
inarticulate sentences, in which occurred the 
names of his wife and child, and falling into 
a troubled slumber, he soon afterwards died : 

"His high aims abandoned — his good acts undone — 
Aweary of all that is under the sun." 

Such was the termination of the Poet's 
career. The world and the glory thereof had 



THE POET. 



149 



been his ; but, unsanctified and unblessed by 
God, all his rich intellectual enjoyments had 
proved illusive as the Mirage. 



" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer 
thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine 
heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all 
these things God will bring thee into judgment." — Eccles. xi. 9. 




MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 



THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 




[he next illustration which we select of 
the Mirage of life, is the man of Wit 
and Humour. Here at least, it may 
be presumed, that the search after happiness 
will be successful. It may be thought that 
they who promote mirth so much in others, 
and who treat life as if it were a jest, have 
themselves found . out the true secret of 
enjoyment. Very different, however, is the 
result. There is a mirth in the midst of 
which the heart is sad, and a laughter the 
end whereof is heaviness. Not that there is 
anything sinful in mirth ; not that it is not a 

L 



I 54 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

quality which, when rightly directed, may be 
turned to useful purposes : but that when 
unsanctified, it is, as a source of happiness, 
a delusion and a Mirage. Cervantes, at a 
time when all Spain was laughing at the 
humorous nights of his pen, was overwhelmed 
with a deep cloud of melancholy. Moliere, 
the first of French comic writers, carried into 
the domestic circle a sadness which the greatest 
worldly prosperity could never dispel. Samuel 
Foote, a noted wit of the last century, died 
of a broken heart. D' Israeli mentions, that 
one morning meeting, in a bookseller's shop, 
a squalid and wretched-looking man, the very 
picture of misery, he was astonished to learn 
that he was a person who was amusing 
the metropolis by his humorous effusions. 
The anecdote is well known of the physician 
recommending a man, who was pining under 
melancholy, to attend, as a means of cure, 
the performances of a noted comic actor, 
and of being informed that his patient was 



THE MAX OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 55 

the actor in question — himself wretched, while 
amusing others. Captain Morris, a witty 
writer of considerable reputation at the com- 
mencement of the present century, when aged, 
deserted, and well-nigh impoverished, de- 
scribed in the following lines the little satis- 
faction which the retrospect of his life of 
folly could afford him : — 

" My friends of youth, manhood, and age, 
At length are all laid in the ground ; 
A unit I stand on life's stage, 
With nothing but vacancy round. 
I wander bewildered and lost, 
Without impulse or interest in view ; 
And all hope of my heart is, at most, 
Soon to bid this cold desert adieu." 

As one of the most striking examples, in 
modern times, of the unsatisfactory nature 
of a life of frivolity, we select, as our next 
illustration, Theodore Hook, or, The Man 
of Wit mid Humour. 

He was the son of a musical com- 



156 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

poser of considerable eminence in his day. 
He was, by death, early deprived of the 
training of his mother, a circumstance to 
which much of the unhappiness of his future 
career may be attributed. His father, return- 
ing home one evening, was astonished at his 
son, then a mere child, producing two ballads, 
which, with appropriate music, he had him- 
self composed : the one plaintive, the other 
humorous. The prognostics of future dis- 
tinction thus afforded were verified by the 
event. At the age of sixteen, a time when 
other youths are just leaving school, he 
was, from his powers of dramatic com- 
position, in the receipt of a considerable 
income, and enjoying great popularity. His 
name was blazoned as a youthful genius in 
the newspapers ; his portrait was taken, and 
he had free admission to the places of public 
amusement. Many a young man in the 
present day would have envied his position 
as containing all that was desirable ! Life lay 



THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 59 

. before him like a smooth ocean ; and, in- 
toxicated by success, he launched his bark 
fearlessly upon it : Youth stood at the prow, 
Mirth trimmed the sails, Folly took the helm ; 
while the pennon which streamed in the air 
bore the words, " Rejoice, O young man, in 
thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in 
the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of 
thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes." 

At this time, a taste for coarse practical 
joking had seized young men. To pull off 
knockers and bell-handles, to carry away trades- 
men's signs, and to overturn the boxes of 
sleeping watchmen, w r ere considered the marks 
of a generous and manly spirit. Hook plunged 
into these amusements, and kept a private 
museum containing abstracted bells, knockers, 
and signboards. We feel some scruple in 
making allusion to such disgraceful follies ; 
but it is necessary, for our illustration, that, 
the gay as well as the grave side of the 
picture should be shown. On one occasion 



l6o THE MIRAGE OF LIEE. 

Hook's friend pointed out to him, as an ap- 
propriate specimen of natural history for his 
museum, a new-gilt eagle of large dimensions, 
which had just been erected over a grocer's 
shop. A few weeks afterwards, the same 
friend happening to be dining with Hook, 
the latter, towards the close of the entertain- 
ment, ordered " the game to be served up." 
Immediately, to the astonishment of the visitor, 
the servant entered the room, staggering under 
the burden of a dish of unusual size. On 
uncovering it there was produced the identical 
eagle which Hook, as a practical joke, had 
contrived to carry off. Such w r ere the con- 
temptible frivolities in which the man of 
humour wasted his youthful prime. 

Among other accomplishments for which he- 
was distinguished, was a remarkable power of 
producing extempore poetry. At a dinner 
party he would, without premeditation, compose 
a verse on every person in the room, full of 
point and w it, and with true rhyme. Sheridan 



THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. l6l 

the orator, who was present upon one of these 
occasions, declared that he could not have 
imagined such a talent possible, had he not 
witnessed the exhibition of it. 

So confident was Hook in his powers of 
humour, that, passing, with a friend, a house 
in which a party was assembling for dinner, he 
undertook, although quite unacquainted with 
the owner of the house or any of the guests, 
to join them, and instructed his friend to call 
for him at ten o'clock. Knocking at the door 
accordingly, he gave his hat confidently to the 
servant, and was ushered up-stairs. Entering 
the drawing-room, he affected to have for 
the first time discovered his mistake, and 
poured out such sallies of wit, that, as he 
had anticipated, the host, although ignorant 
even of his name, pressed him to stay to 
dinner. When his friend Mr. Terry called, 
ignorant whether he should find him there or 
in the neighbouring watch-house, he was aston- 
ished, on being shown into the drawing-room, 



1 62 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

to see the man of humour seated at the 
pianoforte, delivering some extempore poetry, 
which, upon perceiving the entrance of his 
friend, he wound up with the following 
stanza : — 



" I'm very much pleased with your fare, 
Your cellar's as good as your cook. 
My friend's Mr. Terry the player. 
And I'm Mr. Theodore Hook." 



The fame of the man of wit reached 
even royalty itself. The Prince Regent was 
so fascinated with him, that he appointed 
him treasurer to the island of the Mauritius, 
with a salary of 2,000/. a year. He here 
gave himself up to every enjoyment. " This 
island," he wrote home to his friends, " is 
fairyland. The mildness of the air, the clear- 
ness of the atmosphere, the liveliness of the 
place itself, all combine to render it fascination. 
Every hour seems happier than the last." 
Here, then, was Hook at the pinnacle of his 



THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 63 

glory. Rich, popular, witty, and full of friends, 
he had surely found the secret of happiness ! 
No ; he had only followed the Mirage. 

Business and pleasure, in the worldly sense 
of the latter term, are rarely compatible. A 
deficiency of 12,000/. arising not from fraud 
but from gross carelessness, was found in the 
treasury. He was suddenly arrested in a ball- 
room, and sent home a prisoner for debt to 
England, stripped of all his honours, and penni- 
less. Happy would it have been for him had 
this blow awakened him from his dream of 
folly ; but, alas ! as one delusion was dissipated, 
another took its place. By his pen he soon 
achieved literary eminence, and an income of 
4,000/. a year. Seated at the tables of the 
great, he became again, from his wit and 
humour, the life of every party. His versa- 
tile genius sparkled more brilliantly than ever, 
and he was the admired of all admirers. In 
the midst of his gaiety, however, he had an 



164 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

aching heart. From the brilliant saloon, he 
would retire to his lonely apartment ; and 
there, with jaded spirits, sit down to write for 
his bread some work of humour, racking, as has 
been well observed, his imagination for mirth 
with anguish at his heart. " We may venture," 
says one who appears to have known him 
intimately ; " we may venture to supply by way 
of specimen a sketch, by no means overcharged, 
of one of those restless life-exhausting days in 
which the seemingly iron energies of Hook 
were prematurely consumed. A late break- 
fast — his spirits jaded by the exertions of 
yesterday, and further depressed by some 
pecuniary difficulty — large arrears of literary 
toil to be made up — the meal sent away 
untasted — every power of his mind forced 
and strained for the next four or five hours 
upon the subject that happens to be in 
hand — then a rapid drive to town, and a visit 
first to one: club, where, the centre of an ad- 



THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 65 

. miring circle, his intellectual faculties are again 
upon the stretch, and again aroused and sus- 
tained by artificial means — the same thing 
repeated at a second club — a ballot or a general 
meeting at a third — a chop in the committee 
room, and then a tumbler of brandy-and-water, 
or two ; and, we fear, the catalogue would not 
always close here. Off next to take his place 
at some lordly banquet, where the fire of wit 
is to be again stirred into a blaze, and fed 
by fresh supplies of potent stimulants. Lady 
A. has never heard one of his delightful ex- 
tempores — the pianoforte is at hand — fresh 
and more vigorous efforts of fancy, memory, 
and application are called for — all the wondrous 
machinery of the brain taxed and strained to 
the very utmost — smiles and applause reward 
the exertion, and perhaps one more song is 
craved as a special favour. ... He retires at 
last ; but not to rest — not to home. Half an 
hour at Crockford's is proposed by some gay 



1 66 THE MIRAGE OF LIKE. 

companion as they quit together. We need 
not continue the picture. The half-hour is 
quadrupled, and the excitement of the pre- 
ceding part of the evening is as nothing to 
that which now ensues. By the time he 
reaches home the reaction is complete ; and 
in a state of utter prostration, bodily and 
mental, he seeks his pillow, to run perhaps 
precisely a similar course on the morrow." 

Such was the daily life of the man of wit 
and humour ! Hook has left behind him a 
journal, some extracts from which appeared 
in the Quarterly Review a few years ago. It 
is a harrowing description of splendid misery 
— of the life of one who, while in the world's 
opinion full of enjoyment, was in truth 
thoroughly wretched. Let a few brief ex- 
tracts suffice: " To-day I am forcing myself, 
against my inclination, to write. The old 
sickness and faintness of heart came over me, 
and I could not go out. No; it is only to 



THE MAX OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 67 

the grave that I must be carried. If my 
poor children were safe, I would not care. . . . 
Another year opens upon me with a vast 
load of debt, and many encumbrances. I am 
suffering under a constant depression of spirits, 
which no one who sees me in society ever 
dreams of." 

The close was, however, approaching. One 
day, at a dinner party, all were struck with 
his ghastly paleness. Turning round to a 
mirror, he himself exclaimed, " Ah ! I see 
how it is. I look just as I am — done up in 
mind, in body, and purse." Returning home, 
he took to his bed. A friend calling on him 
found him in an undress. " Here you see 
me," he said. " All my buckling, and pad- 
ding, and washing dropped for ever ; and I a 
grey-headed old man." A few days afterwards 
he died. 

Such was the end of the man of wit and 
humour. His noble powers had all been 



1 68 



THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 



wasted in the service of the world. He had 
followed mirth and folly as his grand object 
in life. Oh, how emphatically had they 
proved to him — only the Mirage ! 

" There is a way which secmeth right unto a man, but 
the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the 
heart is sorrowful ; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' — 
Prov. xiv. 12, 13. 




THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 




THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 



fJHERE is another character resembling 
in many points those which we have 
previously sketched, but differing from 
them in some particular shades — we, mean the 
Man of the World. He prides himself on 
his knowledge of life, on his acquaintance 
with its maxims, and on his thorough de- 
votion to its pursuits. It is not our inten- 
tion to draw this character at full length ; but, 
as an illustration of our meaning, briefly bring 
before our readers the name of the celebrated 
Lord Chesterfield, as a type of The Man 
of the World. 

M 2 



I J2 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

This nobleman emphatically deserved this 
title, so much so, that he has been well 
termed by some the high priest of the world's 
vanities. Born to rank, wealth, and talent, he 
enjoyed all the requisites which are commonly 
supposed to constitute happiness. He started 
in life with the determination of gaining the 
applause and favour of the world, making that 
the supreme object of his existence. Selfish- 
ness was the key-stone of his system. The 
maxim of a great statesman — Lord Somers — 
had been, "Aim at being useful, rather than 
at appearing to be so." Lord Chesterfield 
reversed the motto, and read it, M Aim at 
appearing to be, rather than at being, useful." 
To adapt himself to the humours and pecu- 
liarities of all he met; to study their passions 
and weaknesses, that he might play upon 
them for his own advantage ; such were his 
principles of action. lie aimed at being 
thought the most polite man in England, if 
not in Europe. "Hand the gentleman a 



THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 1 75 

chair," were almost his dying words, when a 
friend entered his room during his last illness ; 
thus showing the ruling passion strong in 
death. His popularity was very great. He 
attained a high position in the state. He 
possessed a large and magnificent mansion, 
which, even in the present day, commands 
admiration as a monument of his classic taste.* 



* " In the magnificent mansion which he erected in Audley- 
street, you may still," says_ a writer in the Quarterly Review, 
" see his favourite apartments furnished and decorated as he 
left them; among the rest, what he boasted of as the finest 
room in London, (and perhaps, even now, it remains unsur- 
passed,) his spacious and beautiful library looking on the finest 
private garden in London. The walls are covered half-way up 
with rich and classical stores of literature ; above the cases are, 
in close series, the portraits of eminent authors, French and 
English, with most of whom he had conversed. Over these, 
and immediately under the massive cornice, extend all round in 
foot-long capitals the Horatian lines — 

' Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis 
Ducere solicitae jucunda oblivia vitas.' 

1 Let us drown in sweet oblivion the anxious cares of life — by 
alternate study, slumber, or grateful indolence." 



176 THE MIRAGE OF ! 

He had a mind cultivated and enriched with 
stores of learning and general information. 
The prize, therefore, for which he started in 
life was gained ; but, unsanctified and un- 
blessed by God, his success proved wormwood 
to the taste, and illusive as the Mirage. The 
word of God had said, " Love not the world ; " 
but Lord Chesterfield had in effect declared, 
14 The w r orld I will love." Let his own 
words, penned in the evening of life, tell 
what he had found the result of his decision 
to be. 

" I have run," says he, " the silly rounds of 
business and of pleasure, and have done with 
them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of 
the world, and consequently know their futility, 
and do not regret their loss. I appraise them 
at their real value, which is in truth very low ; 
whereas those who have not experienced them 
always overrate them. They only see the gay 
outside, and are dazzled with their glare ; but I 



THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 1/7 

have been behind the scenes, and have seen all 
the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which 
exhibit and move the gaudy machine. I have 
seen and smelt the tallow candles w T hich 
illuminate the whole decorations, to the aston- 
ishment and admiration of an ignorant audi- 
ence. I look back on all that is passed as 
one of those romantic dreams which opium 
commonly produces, and I have no wis'h to 
repeat the nauseous dose. I have been as 
wicked and as vain as Solomon ; but am 
now at last able to feel and attest the truth of 
his reflection, that all is vanity and vexation 
of spirit. Shall I tell you that I bear this 
situation with resignation and constancy ? 
No ; I bear it because I must, whether I will 
or no. I think of nothing but killing time 
the best way I can, now that it has become 
my enemy. It is my resolution to sleep in 
the carriage during the rest of life's journey." 
Such was the confession of the man of the 



I 78 THE MIRAGE OF I 

world. Selfishness had been the mainspring 

of his conduct. The result had been, dis- 
satisfaction of spirit, the illusion of the Mirage. 



" Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. 
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the 
world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but 
he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." — 1 John ii. 15-17. 




THE BEAUTY. 



THE BEAUTY. 



hese pages may meet the eye of seme 
who are exulting in all the gladness 
of youthful Beauty. To such we 
address a few words of warning against con- 
fiding in this most alluring yet most illusive 
Mirage. Yes ! even beauty, so much prized, 
has often proved only a mockery and a 
snare ; and, when unaccompanied by the fear 
of God, been a source of sorrow to its 
possessors. 

What suggestions illustrative of the truth 
of this remark are called forth by the name 
of Mary, Queen of Scots ! If ever the 
possession of beauty and female charms could 



[82 THE MIRAGE OF I II £ 

have guaranteed happiness, she might with 
justice have expected it. " All contemporary 
authors," says Robertson the historian, "agree 
in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of 
countenance and elegance of shape of which 
the human form is capable. No one ever 
beheld her without admiration." Yet this 
very beauty proved one of the causes of her 
ruin. " Ah ! what a life were this, gay ladies. 
could it only last for ever ! " said the Scottish 
reformer Knox, when he visited her court 
and glanced at its brilliant circle. Truly was 
this warning given. Behind the deceptive 
scene was lurking the scaffold, and an igno- 
minious death. A few years more saw the 
once young and beautiful queen bending 
beneath the executioner's axe, and closing her 
career in shame and sorrow. 

The life of Marie Antoinette, Queen o\ 
France, is another illustration of the Mir 
of brant). Distinguished by her personal 
charms, she ascended, when very young, the 



THE BEAUTY. 1 83 

throne of one of the most powerful countries 
in Europe, and gave herself up to a life of 
worldly enjoyment. All that art and luxury 
could contribute to make life happy were 
hers. Yet, in the end, it proved baseless as 
the Mirage. . Time rolled on, and saw the 
once youthful and romantic queen, with locks 
turned prematurely gray by sorrow, conducted 
by a yelling mob to the guillotine. 

Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, was also 
distinguished for her personal charms, and, 
her devotion to the pleasures of the world. 
She, too, found them all delusive ; saw her 
regal power dissolve like a vision, and died 
of a broken heart. 

Descending from the circle of royalty, we 
find a similar lesson conveyed in recent times 
in the career of the celebrated Lady Hamil- 
ton, or, The Beauty. 

The name of this woman will be familiar 
to all who have read the Life of Lord Nelson. 



184 THE MI RACK OF ! 

His unhappy connection with her casts a 
deep shade on his character, and was the 
cause of the chief blot which rests upon his 
fame, in the execution of Caraccioli at 
Naples. Lady Hamilton was distinguished 
above almost every woman of her age for 
personal beauty. A poetical writer, when 
sketching her character, thus speaks : — 

" I've seen thy bust in many lands: 
I've seen the stranger pause with lifted hands. 
In deep mute admiration — while his eye 
Dwelt sparkling on its peerless symmetry. 
I've seen the poet's, painter's, sculptor's gaze 
Speak with rapt glance the eloquence of praise/' * 

Her accomplishments were scarcely inferior 
to her beauty. " She was skilled," says her 
biographer, " in music and painting. She 
had exquisite taste, and her features could 
express every emotion by turn." By her 
fascinating manners, she soon acquired a 

* A similar impression was made on the writer when looking 
;it an original portrait by Romne> of Lady Hamilton in her 
youthful days. From whatever part of the room it was 
approached, the picture fixed and fascinated the eye. 



THE BEAUTY. 187 

great influence over Nelson, and her friend- 
ship was eagerly sought by crowds of 
aspirants for court favour. The letters of 
Lord Nelson, recently published, contain 
several addressed to her by persons in the 
upper classes of society, who in the hour of 
prosperity fawned upon her, and were ready 
to do her abject homage. These letters com- 
mence, " My dear Lady Hamilton ; " N My 
esteemed Lady Hamilton." The world lay 
at her feet, and nothing seemed to forebode 
that what she was following was but as the 
Mirage. The only occasion on which Beck- 
ford of Fonthill threw open his splendid 
mansion to company was when Lady Hamil- 
ton, along with Lord Nelson, visited it. All 
that the wealth of the princely owner could 
furnish was provided to give splendour to 
the scene. The grounds were illuminated by 
lamps and torches, and the interior of the 
apartments was a blaze of jewellery and gold 
and silver. " Spiced wine," says the Gentle- 

N £ 



1 88 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

man's Magazine of the daw " and confec- 
tionery in golden baskets, were handed round 
to the company." A numerous party was 
assembled, and Lad)' Hamilton shone the 
envy of them all. Attired in a rich costume, 
she entered with a golden urn in her hands, 
and recited some verses, which the company 
was far too politic not rapturously to applaud, 
spoken as they were by one who had such in- 
fluence over the hero of the hour. No one was 
there to tell her that all this was but decep- 
tion ; that sin surely carried its own punishment 
with it, and the pleasures she was pursuing were 
merely the Mirage. And yet it was even so. 

Thirteen years after the banquet at Font- 
hill had taken place, a lad)-, buying some 
meat for her dog at a butcher's stall in 
Calais, was thus accosted by the butcher's 
wife : " Ah, madam ! you seem a benevolent 
lady; and upstairs there is a poor English- 
woman, who would be glad o[ the smallest 
piece of meat which you are buying (or your 



THE BEAUTY. I 89 

dog." Who was the grateful recipient of 
such humble alms? Alas! Lady Hamilton, 
the beauty! After the death of Lord Nelson, 
deserted by those who fawned upon her in 
prosperity, she gradually became impoverished, 
and died in a wretched lodging in Calais. 
Her property consisted only of a few pawn- 
broker's duplicates. Her body was put into 
a common deal box, without any inscription. 
A pall was made, by the hand of charity, 
out of an old silk gown belonging to the 
deceased, stitched upon a white curtain ; and, 
over the praised of statesmen, warriors, poets, 
and artists, the funeral service was read by 
an Irish officer on half-pay. " Her remains 
lie buried," says Rae Wilson, the traveller, 
" in the ditch of Calais." By others, the 
spot of her interment is said now to be used 
as a common wood-yard ; nothing indicating 
where her ashes repose. Such was the end 
of the beauty. How emphatically had her 
career been only the Mirage ! 



190 THE MIRAGE OF III I.. 

If any confirmation were needed of the 
melancholy truth conveyed in the above les- 
son, it would be found in the life of the well- 
known Lady Hester Stanhope. Few women 
entered life with greater opportunities <>f 
enjoying it than she did; and seldom was an 
elevation so dazzling as hers. The niece of 
Mr. Pitt, the favourite minister of George 
III., she was flattered by royalty, and made 
a theme for the illustration of poetry, painting, 
and sculpture. Sated, however, with worldly 
greatness, she retired to the solitudes oi the 
East, and there attempted to establish her 
reputation as Queen of the Desert. Her 
lofty visions all faded, however; and in the 
evening of lite, forsaken by her friends and 
burdened with pecuniar) difficulties,* the once 

* Dr. Thomson, who performed the funeral service over the 
remains of Lad] Stanhope, wrote : " What a death ! Without 
i European attendant, without .1 friend, male or female— alone 
on the top of this bleak mountain, her lamp o\ life grew dimmer 
and more dim, until it went quite out in hopeless, rayless night. 
Such was the end of the one gay and brilliant niece of Pitt. 



THE BEAUTY. I9I 

youthful beauty thus confessed how she had 
proved the vanity of life : — " She began," says 
her biographer, " to cry and to wring her 
hands, presenting a most melancholy picture 
of despair. She then spoke thus : ' Look on 
me ; what a lesson I am against vanity ! 
Look at this arm, all skin and bone — so thin 
that you may see through it. It was once, 
without exaggeration, so rounded that you 
could not pinch the skin up. My neck was 
once so fair, that a pearl necklace scarcely 
showed on it ; and men — men who were no 
fools, but sensible men — would say to me : 
You have a neck of which you may really be 
proud. You are one of nature's favourites, and 
may be excused for admiring that beautiful 
skin. What would they say if they could 
behold me now ; with my teeth all gone, and 

presiding in the saloons of the master spirit of Europe, and 
familiar with the intrigues of kings and cabinets. Alas ! she 
must have drained to the dregs many a bitter cup. Let those 
who are tempted to revolt against society, and war with nature, 
God, and man, sit on the fragments of this broken tomb." 



192 



l !M. MIRAGE OF I.I! I.. 



long lines on my face?'. ... In this mourn- 
ful strain," adds her biographer, " she went on. 
Everything around her presented so affecting 

a picture, that, unable to restrain my emotions, 
I burst into tears." Such were the confes- 
sions of a beauty. How completely had she 
found all her youthful charms illusive as the 
Mirage ! 

•' Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain : but a woman that 
feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."— Prov. xxxi. 30. 




THE MONARCH. 




THE MONARCH. 



Jhe cares and annoyances incidental to 
power and elevated rank have proved a 
frequent theme of declamation to the 
moralist and the poet ; and, as appropriately 
concluding our sketches of the Mirage of Life, 
we propose to select our next illustration from 
the highest point of human greatness — the 
throne of the Monarch. As to no individual 
is given in a higher degree the capacity of 
promoting human happiness, and advancing 
the Divine glory, so nowhere do we find 
more thrilling lessons than in the career of 
the monarch, as to the vanity and worthlessness 



I 9-6 I HE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

<>t the world, when the heart has been devoted 

to its worship. Charles the Fifth, after a life 
spent in military exploits, and the active 
and energetic prosecution of ambitious pro- 
jects, resigned, as is well known, his crown, 
sated with its enjoyment. The Emp 
Catherine of Russia endeavoured to find 
happiness in gratifying, to the utmost, ex- 
pensive tastes, and heaping up a costly col- 
lection of works of art. She was so pressed, 
however, we are informed, by the torments 
of a guilty conscience, as to be at times 
compelled to leave her chamber at night, 
and rush from her palace, scourged by the 
lashes of her inward tormentor. Beckford 
<>f Fonthill, when in Portugal, at the close 
of the last century, met with a similar spec 
tacle of misery in the circles of royalty, 
during his visit to the palace of the queen 
dowager of that country. Her conscience, it 
is supposed, was burdened with some unre 
pented guilt. She imagined, by night and 



THE MONARCH, I 97 

. by day, that she beheld her father a mass 
of calcined cinder enveloped in flame and 
fastened to a pedestal of molten iron. At 
the very time that Beckford was listening 
to the narrative of her sufferings, in an ad- 
joining apartment, the most agonizing shrieks, 
such as he had hardly conceived possible to 
be uttered, rang through the palace, inflicting 
upon the visitor a sensation of horror which 
he had never experienced before. These were 
the cries of the unhappy queen, surrounded 
by everything that could minister to her 
comfort, and yet profoundly miserable. Many 
other examples might be produced, illustrative 
of the truth that often " uneasy lies the head 
that wears a crown." But as one of the 
most striking instances, in modern or in 
ancient times, of the unsatisfactory career of 
a king, when devoid of Christian principle, 
we select, as appropriately concluding these 
sketches, the life of Napoleon Bcnaparte, or, 
The Monarch. 



MjS iiii; MIRAGE OF LIFE, 

This extraordinary man was born at Corsica 
in the year 1769. Although signs of genius 

were noticed in him when a boy, yet none 
could have anticipated that the quiet and 
studious youth was afterwards to play so re- 
markable a part on the stage of life. Having 
chosen the military profession, he remained 
for some years in the ranks of the arm), 
noticed only as an attentive and intelligent 
officer. The great outburst of the first French 
Revolution, however, soon took place, and cir- 
cumstances arose which called into action his 
wonderful powers. Toulon witnessed the first 
marked display of his great military talents. 

Stepping from one post to another, he 
found himself ere long, from being an ob- 
scure officer, appointed to the command oi 
the army of Italy. Had the spectacle 
been such as could have awakened the re- 
spect of our moral faculties, his position at 
this time would have deserved admiration. 
Young and enterprising, he displayed qualities 



! 




THE MONARCH. 201 

of ardour, energy, and perseverance worthy 
of a better cause. Victory followed victory. 
The skill of the oldest and most experienced 
generals failed when brought into contact 
with him, and he was soon placed at the head 
of an army flushed with success, and became 
the master of a large country, with potentates 
anxiously suing for peace. This was but the 
commencement of his onward career. Re- 
turning home, he was consumed with a pas- 
sion for military glory, and, with a bold but 
unscrupulous genius, he designed his expedi- 
tion to Egypt. Here, too, success accom- 
panied him. The decayed energies of the 
country received an impulse from his hands ; 
and Egypt, long sunk under oppression, was 
made, under his rule, to bear some resem- 
blance to the bustling and prosperous land 
which it had been in the days of the Pharaohs. 
Egypt served but as the vaulting-board from 
which he sprang, under circumstances that 
would have crushed a less determined spirit, 
o 



202 THE MIRAGE 01 LIFE. 

t<> the post of supreme rule. He was made 
first consul of France. Having gained this 
power, he was not slow to augment it. The 
fortunes of the country, which had long de- 
clined, began, under his hand, to rail}-. Even 
the physical barriers imposed by nature did 
not present obstacles too great lor his per- 
severance to overcome. The Alps themselves 
were scaled by him. The disasters and 
dangers which had threatened France were 
turned into victories. The crown, for which 
he had SO long panted, was at last placed 
upon his brow. The pontiff oi the Roman 
Catholic Church travelled to Paris to preside 
at the ceremony of his coronation; and art 
lent all its aid to make the spectacle gorgeous. 

Even this elevation, however, did not mark 

the zenith Of Napoleon's power. It seemed 
K)ar afresh from those points at which 

other minds would have paused for repose. 

In a series of battles he defeated every army 

which opposed him. No weapon formed 



THE MONARCH. 203 

against him seemed to prosper. Kingdoms 
were broken up by him, and ancient bound- 
aries altered at his pleasure. As he grew 
in power, however, he grew also in pride. 
His levees and ante-rooms were crowded, not 
only with courtiers, but with princes and 
kings, longing for his smiles or a glance of 
approbation. Never, perhaps, had mortal risen 
before to such a point of elevation. With 
the majority of the countries of Europe 
tributary to him, he seemed above the reach 
of reverses. But, unfounded in equity, based 
on unrighteousness, even this mighty empire 
was to pass away like the Mirage. 

Blinded by pride, he was tempted to in- 
vade Russia. The result is well known. 
Amidst the snows of that vast empire, he 
saw entombed an army surpassing in magni- 
tude any which had ever been led forth by 
a conqueror in modern times. His power 
was sapped by this disaster. The combined 
monarchs of Europe rose, in the hope of de- 



204 nil- MIRAGE OF LIFE. 

liverance from the oppression which had so 
long weighed them down. One by one, he 
saw the fragments of his authority pass away. 
Like a desperate gambler, he risked his all 
upon the die, and found himself at last a 
captive on the barren rock of St. Helena. 

And now was to be exemplified, the vanity 
of worldly ambition. The mighty monarch's 
train was reduced to a few attendants, and 
his territory to a plot of garden ground. 
He, who had made so many widows and 
orphans, was himself deprived of his wife 
and son. The schemes to which his active 
mind turned for recreation proved abortive. 
" Let us live on the past," he exclaimed. 
Hut the retrospect exhibited only a course 
of selfish aggrandizement. He sickened, and 
pined for death. "Why," he would ask, "did 
the cannon balls spare me to die in this 
manner? I am no longer the Great Na 
poleon." "How fallen 1 am!" he would at 
other times exclaim, "I, whose activity was 



THE MONARCH. 205 

. boundless, whose mind never slumbered, am 
plunged in lethargic stupor, and must make 
an effort even to raise my eyelids. I some- 
times dictated upon different subjects to four 
or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as 
words could be uttered ; but then I was 
Napoleon. Now I am no longer anything. 
My strength, my faculties forsake me. I do 
not live ; I merely exist." 

At other times his reflections took a reli- 
gious turn : " Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, 
and myself, founded empires upon force. Jesus 
Christ alone founded his empire upon love, 
and at this hour millions of men would die 
for Him. I die before my time, and my body 
will be given back to the earth to become 
food for the worms. Such is the fate which so 
soon awaits him who has been called the Great 
Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep 
misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, 
which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and 
which is extending over the whole earth ! " 



206 I 111. MIRAGE l '1 IN E. 

With the failure of his health his spirits 
also drooped. Some fishes in a pond in 
his garden had attracted his notice; a d 
terious substance happened to mix with the 
water ; they sickened and died. " Every- 
thing that I love," says Napoleon; "every- 
thing that belongs to tne y is stricken. Heaven 
and mankind unite to afflict me." Fits of long 
silence and profound melancholy were now 
frequent. His health became weaker and 
weaker, his weariness of life more apparent; 
but at length the final scene in his eventful 

course drew nigh. His disorder reached its 

height. In his last hours, his thoughts min- 
gled with the battle strife : "Steingell, Dessaix, 

Massena," he exclaimed, in the midst ^\ his 
wanderings of mind, "victory is declaring 
itself. Run 1 hasten! press the charge! they 
ar<- ours." Soon afterwards he died. A narrow 
grave, overhung by a weeping willow, long 
marked the spot where the remains o\ the 
mighty conqueror reposed. 



THE MONARCH. 



207 



Such was Napoleon Bonaparte ; the pos- 
sessor of talents of the highest order, of 
power the most unbounded, of opportunities of 
usefulness the most varied. Every element 
of human happiness had been within his 
reach ; but all, without the Divine blessing, 
had proved unsubstantial as the Mirage. 

" What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, 
and lose his own soul?'' — Matt. xvi. 26. 




CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



In the preceding pages have been given 
the outlines of the career of various 
individuals, who, drinking deeply of 
the world's enjoyments, yet found in the end 
that all which they had followed had been 
but vanity and vexation of spirit. The list 
of examples furnished might have been en- 
larged by others belonging to a more remote 
period ; but it has been our desire to sustain 
the interest of the subject by selecting the 
illustrations from modern times. 

By way of brief addition, however, to the 
characters previously delineated, we may point, 
as The Successfid Lawyer, to Lord Keeper 
North, panting for years to grasp the great 



2 I 2 THE MIRAGE 01 III B. 

seal of England, but confessing, when he- 
had actually gained the object of pursuit. 
that he scared)' enjoyed one minute of 
peace. " The king/ 1 says his biographer, de- 
scribing his appointment, " lifted up the purse 
containing the seal, and putting it into his 
hands, said, ' Here, my lord, take it. You will 

find it heavy. 1 Thus his majesty acted the 
prophet as well as the king; lor, shortly 1>< 
his lordship's death, he declared, that since he 
had had the seal he had not enjoyed an i 
<»r contented minute." As '/ho Scholar, G 
ii i > will occur to recollection, envying «>n his 
deathbed a poor but pious peasant, who had 
devoted much of his time to prayer and the 
perusal of the Scriptures, while he himseli 
he confessed, had lost a lifetime in laborious 
trifling. As Vho Philosopher, BaCOM ma\ be 

appropriately pointed t«>. lie explored all the 
heights, and sounded all the depths of phi- 
losophy, \et dosed his days in dishonour, a 
chagrined and disappointed man. As The 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 2 15 

Man of Enterprise, how touching it is to 
find Columbus, discovering a new world, yet 
dying of the sickness of hope deferred, and 
declaring that he could not have served the 
monarch who neglected him more faithfully 
had it been to obtain paradise. Turning to 
the pages of Scripture, we find Solomon sur- 
passing in wisdom and glory all the princes 
of the earth, and yet confessing in the end, 
that, with the exception of the fear of God 
and keeping his commandments, all else was 
vanity and vexation of spirit.* " I said in 
mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with 

* " It may be vanity to pursue pleasure and gratify appetite, 
to hunt after renown. It may be vanity to buy fine houses, pre- 
serve pheasants, plant trees, acquire an estate, with the hills 
from the lighthouse to Weybourne for a boundary ; but it is not 
vanity, it is excellent good sense, to serve with all the heart, and 
soul, and might, and main, the Master and Creator of these 
heavens. It is not vanity to conquer evil passions, and stifle 
unholy repinings ; it is not vanity to be patient, submissive, and 
gentle and cheerful ; and in seasons of trial and privation to 
spread around a loving and holy influence, so that the sufferer 
becomes the teacher and the comforter ?— Memoirs of Sir 
Thomas Fowell Buxton. 



2 I 6 THE MM 

mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure : ami, behold, 
this also is vanity. 1 said of laughter, It is 
mad : an^l of mirth. What doeth it ? . , 

I made me great works; I builded me hou 
I planted me vineyards : I made me gardens 

and orchards, and I planted trees in them of 
all kind of fruits: 1 made me pods of water. 
to water therewith the wood that bringeth 

forth trees I I got me servants and maidens, 
and had servants horn in my house; also 1 

had great i ns of great and small 

cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before 
me; 1 gathered me also silver and gold, and 
the peculiar treasure (A kings and ^i the 
provinces: 1 gat me men singers and women 
singers, and the- delights of the sons ^( men. 
musical instruments, and that of all sorts. 

I was great, and increased more than all 

that were before me in Jerusalem : also my 
wisdom remained with me. Ami whatsa 
mine eyes desired I kept not from them. 1 

withheld not my heart from any joy; for my 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 217 

heart rejoiced in all my labour : and this was 
my portion of all my labour. Then I looked 
on all the works that my hands had wrought, 
and on the labour that I had laboured to do : 
and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of 
spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."* 
What lesson, then, are we to draw from these 
solemn attestations of the vanity of human 
pursuits, and the Mirage of Life ? That hap- 
piness is nowhere to be found ? No ! Such a 
conclusion would be at variance with experience, 
and a libel on the bounty of that great Being 
who has given us all things richly to enjoy, and 
who has multiplied with a lavish hand the ma- 
terials of pleasure for the gratification of his 
creatures. Is this then the lesson taught, — 
that wealth, art, fame, eloquence, power, were 
in themselves sinful ? No : it is possible 
to be a man of wealth, and yet a John 
Thornton ; a hero, and yet a Gardiner or 
a Havelock ; an orator, and yet a Jeremy 

* Eccles. ii. 1-11. 
P 



THE IIIF \«.i. "l I 

;• a Robert Hall; a man of wit, and 
a Wilberforce ; an artist, and 
>n the sculptor; a beauty, and 
have persona] charms eclipsed by th< 
of holiness. The truth to be drawn I 
the examples cited is, not that ther 
happiness in life, but that in a life unsanctified 
by religion no real, or at lea rmanent 

bliss is to be found. It is no want of charity 
to assert, that the individuals whose chanu 

have drawn sought their chief enjoyment 
in the world. In the i-m\, it proved to them 
a broken cistern which could hold n^ water. 
Such ever has been, and ever must be, the 
result of all attempts to find pleasure in the 
; ure apart from the ( Y< at< >r. " Thou 
shah love the Lord tin God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy strength, and with all thy mind," was the 
; law originally engraven by the Almight) 
i «n the heart i >f a man ; and \\ hile it is n< 
all expectations of solid or abiding enjoyment 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 2IO, 

are a chimera and a delusion. The faculties of 
the soul, in their fallen condition, have lost their 
original centre, and are restless and dissatisfied, 
each seeking its own selfish gratification. It is 
only when the heart, under the drawing of the 
Holy Spirit, returns to God in the way He has 
pointed out, through the Redeemer, the Lord 
Jesus Christ, by a true faith and cordial ac- 
ceptance of him as the Saviour of sinners, that 
it finds its rest. All the powers of the soul 
become then obedient to their lawful Head, 
and peace and harmony enter where before 
were confusion and disorder. 

Nor let it be supposed that the reverses 
and disappointments, which we have described 
as incidental to human life, are peculiar to 
men of elevated station or distinguished genius. 
By fixing the glass at a lower range, we 
should doubtless have been enabled to present 
numerous instances of the Mirage of Life in 
humbler classes of society, though not pos- 
sessing interest enough to form the subject 



THE MIRAGE 01 

In all 

ty, how different are the closing i 
ning scenes of life! The youth, who 

has started \n the wealth, fi 

himself too often a disappointed old man, 
struggling with embarrassments and mi 

tunc. He who had looked forward to length 
pines perhaps in sickne is cut 

off in his prime. Another, who had pictured 
an ideal paradise of domestic enjoyment. 
the object of his affections laid \n t; 

and the children of early promise cut ofl 

or blasting by misconduct the fond 
hopes which parental love had entertained. 
Multitudes will join, from painful ev 

in the following sad retrospect of life: 

I be made of youthful hope was v.. 

'l h " ling* red long and la( 
Ambition .ill dissolved in .iir 

With phantom ide. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 221 

When we turn, however, to the pages of 
Christian biography, do we find any instances 
of individuals who had truly devoted them- 
selves to the service of God, complaining that 
they had found that the Mirage ? No : God 
is the fountain of living water, at which man 
may supply all his wants, while still the 
supply is inexhausted, because inexhaustible. 
His gospel meets the cravings of man's 
heart for happiness. Faith in the great 
atoning sacrifice of Christ gives peace to the 
troubled conscience ; the renewing and sanc- 
tifying influences of the Holy Spirit restore 
health and happiness to the soul which they 
enter ; the service of Christ calls into vigorous 
and harmonious action all the mental powers ; 
while trust in God's providence, if it does 
not give exemption from the vicissitudes to 
which life is subject, sanctifies them and 
turns them into a source of blessing. Let 
the honoured lives of Wilberforce, Simeon, 
and many other pious men of modern times, 



::: THE MIRAG1 



bte appealed to. Sec them drawing 

to their latter end full < 
honours, and with a hope bright with immor- 
tality. See Payson on his death-bed acknow- 
ledging after a life devoted to the- servi 
God, that he swam in a sea of glory, and 
was tilled, in the prospect of eternity, with a 
joy beyond the power of uiurar. 

By these bright examples on the one hand. 

and by tile instances of worldly failure aln 

adduced on the other, we would affectionately 

entreat our reader solemnly to a^k him 
what is his great object in life, and to take 

heed that he is not chasing the Mirage. The 
ts which he is following may he of a 
dignified nature than those pursued by 
the characters we have sketched; hut if un- 
sanctified, if pursued without reference to the 
glor) I I, sooner or later, in eternity \\ 
not in time, they will he found to have 1 
hut vanity and vexation of spirit 

the young do we moi illy appeal. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 223 

Before their eyes the Mirage is apt to expand 
in all its false and treacherous hues. Oh, let 
them be persuaded now, ere it is too late, to 
cease from its vain pursuit ; to detect the 
hollowness of the world's attractions, and to 
take up the light and easy yoke of Christ. 
Repent, and believe the gospel. Flee, while 
it is yet time, to the Saviour. Seek in 
earnest prayer for the teaching of the Holy 
Spirit, to create Avithin you a new and a 
contrite heart, and to enable you to cleave to 
Christ, with full purpose to devote yourselves 
to his service, henceforth leading a new life, 
and following the commandments of God. 

To any weary-hearted wanderer who has 
long chased the Mirage, we would tender 
the Saviour's gracious invitation : " Come 
unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am 
meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy 



-- I THE MIRAGE OF I 

and My burden is light" Justified thr 
faith in the Son of God, and d by 

his Spirit, you will find that r which 

you have so long unsuccessfully sought in 
an ensnaring world. Thr Saviour's i 
mandments you will discover to be not 
grievous, his service to be perf dont 

rhe el.»se of life, which, to so many, rei 
only the illusions they have followed, shall to 
you furnish matter for adoring and grateful 
retrospection. Death itself will be strip 
of its sting. It shall ],n»ve the j^rtal through 
Which you shall enter u\Hm joys infinite in 
degree, and everlasting in duration; while 
through eternity you shall bless that If 

• which first led you to abandon for ever 

Vain pursuit of i in MIR \<.r 01 ] ii i . 

1 1 '• ei r) one thai thirsteth, 

to the U.H 
And he thai hath no moncj : come ye, bit) and 
oroe, bu) irine and milk 
none] and without pri 
Uh nd in.. ii, \ for that which ia n< 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

And your labour for that which satisfieth not? 

Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is 

And let your soul delight itself in fatness. 

Incline your ear and come unto me : 

Hear, and your soul shall live." — Isaiah lv. 1-3. 



22 ^ 



^ood, 




Handsome Illustrated Gift Books. 



SWISS PICTURES DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL. 

With numerous fine Illustrations by E. Whymper, f.r.g.s. 8s. handsomely bound 
in cloth, gilt edges. 



" The staple of this volume consists of more than a hundred wood engravings of 
Swiss scenery, designed and executed by Mr. E. Whymper, who is very successful in 
the delineation of mountain scenery. The accompanying letterpress is sufficient for 
the purpose of explaining the pictorial designs, and is diversified with eloquent pas- 
sages from the works of Mr. Ruskin. The work is well adapted for a large popular 
circulation." Daily News. 

" The name of Mr. Whymper is alone sufficient to insure a large demand for this 
beautiful quarto. The Religious Tract Society has been fortunate enough to secure 
his services for a considerable space of time in illustrating their publications. The 
Society has done well to collect his designs and issue them in a collected and permanent 
form. Fine toned paper and beautiful print set them off to the best advantage. The 
sketches of Alpine climbing are unique. It is seldom the qualities of a bold moun- 
taineer and a first-rate artist are combined as they are in Mr. Whymper." Reader. 

"A book to sell itself, whatever reviewers may say about it. It is a rich, cheap, 
and very attractive volume. The letterpress does not make much pretension, but it 
is sufficient in companionship to the most pleasantly vivid wood-engravings. Those 
who have travelled through these delightful grounds, will find impressions pleasantly 
renewed, and those who have not been, as they turn its pages, will long to go. 
Numerous, almost to surfeiting, as are the books on Switzerland, there was a niche 
left for this handsome volume, and it occupies its place well." Eclectic Review. 

"This is the cheapest and best book of its kind we have ever seen, and will give 
persons who have never been in Switzerland as good an idea of glaciers and snow- 
peaks as any book we know of, while those who are familiar with Alpine scenery will 
enjoy the recollection which its thoroughly faithful pictures will call up. The book is 
extremely well arranged." Literary Churchman. 



fflustraUd i 



OUR LIFE ILLUSTRATED BY PEN AND 

I :tcrw,,rth an-1 Heath. Printed in the • 



»tt!c v„|„me : I f ,„;„„,. p,^, an(J prQ-e . 

ii niiilf ■■ 

MT, the 

ind the illustnti 

my volume ii 
both the letten 



Handsome Illustrated Gift Books. 
THE MONTHS ILLUSTRATED BY PEN AND PENCIL. 

Numerous Designs by Gilbert, Noel Humphreys, Barnes, Wimperis, North, Lee, and 

other first-rate Artists. Engraved by Butterworth and Heath. Printed in 

the finest style, on toned paper, by Messrs. Clay and Co. Small 

4to. tos. 6d. handsomely bound, gilt edges. 



"The pencils employed are those of well-known artists, and the text, poetry, and 
prose is taken from a long series of English writers dating from Chaucer to Tennyson. 
The illustrations are excellent, and include many delicate specimens of wood-engraving. 
The devotional tone of the book will recommend it to a large circle of readers, while 
its general excellence places it among the most unexceptional works for presentation." 

Times. 

" This is one of the prettiest Christmas books we have seen. . . . When we state 
that the designs are in the artists' best. style, and that the engravings rendered, 
together with the printing, on tinted paper, represent the wood engraver's and the 
typographic art in their highest state of advancement, the merits of this very beautiful 
Season Gift Book will need no further eulogy." Morning Post. 

" It would be difficult to find a volume which more completely fulfils all that is 
expected of a Christmas book." The Globe. 

" The literary portion consists of numerous passages descriptive of. or relating to, 
the months, judiciously selected from the best writers ; and these are accompanied by 
a large number of woodcuts appropriate to the subject-matter, from the pencils of 
artists of well-known taste and skill. The whole will bear comparison with the best 
works of the class." Art Journal. 

" It is difficult to decide whether the pen or the pencil has done most for this hand- 
some volume. The engravings illustrate the seasons in the most admirable manner." 

The Bookseller. 

" It is prettily got up; the verses which form its staple are not ill chosen : all are of 
a devotional class." The Athenceunt. 



' 



ENGLISH SACRED POETRY OF THE OLD] 



! il merely fro 

■ 
nt, it will have irrc-0-.tihlc cli.i: 

lUtui 

■ 
..rum. 

1 



Handsome Illustrated Gift Books. 



THE STORY OF A DIAMOND. 

A TALE OF EASTERN LIFE. 

• .Miss M. L. Whately. Imperial i6rao. 3s. cloth boards, gilt edges. 



CHRONICLES OF AN OED MANOR HOUSE. 

By G. E. Sargent, Author of "A Story of a Pocket Bible," &c. With Engravings. 
Imperial i6mo. 4s. bevelled cloth boards, gilt edges. 



FROM DAWN TO DARK IN ITALY. 

A TALE OF THE REFORMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

Numerous fine Engravings. Imperial i6mo. 4s. cloth boards, gilt edges. 



POMPONIA ; 

OR, THE GOSPEL IN CAESAR'S HOUSEHOLD. 

By Mrs. Webb, Author of "Naomi," "Alypius of Tagaste," &c. Engraving: 
Imperial i6mo. 4s. cloth boards, gilt edges. 



ALYPIUS OF TAGASTE. 

A TALE OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 

By Mrs. Webb, Author of "Pomponia." Engravings. Imp. i6mo. 3s. 6d. cloth, 
gilt edges. 



PALESTINE FOR THE YOUNG. 

Hy the Rev.A. A. Bonar. With Engravings. Imperial i6mo. s s - cloth, gilt edg< 



GOLDEN HILLS. 

A TALE OF THE IRISH FAMINE. 

My the Author of '' Cedar Creek." Engravings. Imp. i6mo. 3s. 6d. 



THE FOSTER-BROTHERS OF DOON. 

A TALE OF THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1798. 

By the Author of " Golden Hills," " Cedar Creek," &c. Engravings. 4^. cloth. 






IESSK I PRAY1 R. 






By tker. 

PILGRIM STRE1 

■ 



I III. « HILDREN OF < U \\ I Rl IV. 



1 \< M II R( ID] Vs rRAINING. 



I l RN'S I i -W 



» III I l-lll KS i >l M kin II \\ 1 \. 



1 



■ 









LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



017 043 661 1 t 



< I I -> 



' ■ & 








HI 

1 

■ 







